On US Intervention and the Venezuelan State
Interview With Federico Fuentes
July 14, 2026
As part of Spectre’s ongoing discussion regarding how the Left can think the conjuncture in Venezuela given recent US intervention and the dynamics of the Venezuelan state, here Spectre editors Shireen Akram-Boshar and Charlie Post interview Federico Fuentes. Federico is a longtime Venezuela solidarity activist who lived in Caracas for several years during the Hugo Chávez government as a correspondent for Green Left and investigator at the Centro Internacional Miranda. He is co-author of Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First Century Socialism and editor of LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, which has hosted a discussion on Maduro’s Venezuela primarily with articles by and interviews with Venezuelan leftists. For our earlier coverage see Spectre editor Maga Miranda’s interview with Geo Maher, “The US Kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro,” and Manuel Cassique Herrera’s response, “Communes and Crises.”
The January 3 US military assault, which also led to the deaths of more than one hundred Venezuelan and Cuban civilians and security personnel, represents a grave attack on sovereignty, peace and democratic rights—and not just for Venezuela. The events since have only confirmed these actions had nothing to do with narcotrafficking or democracy and everything to do with reasserting US dominance in Venezuela and Latin America more broadly.
Six months on, Venezuela is essentially a twenty-first century US protectorate in the heart of Latin America.1Álvaro García Linera, “The rise of 21st century protectorates,” LINKS, February 28, 2026, https://links.org.au/alvaro-garcia-linera-rise-21st-century-protectorates. Today, the United States economically and politically controls Venezuela, having placed the country under coercive tutelage and neocolonial administration.2Elías Jaua & Federico Fuentes, “Former Chávez VP: Venezuela needs a new ‘struggle for liberation’,” LINKS, May 16, 2026, https://links.org.au/former-chavez-vp-venezuela-needs-new-struggle-liberation. The United States has seized control of the country’s oil exports and revenue, opened other strategic sectors (such as mining and electricity) to US corporations, carried out a geopolitical realignment (or “outward regime change”) of the country’s foreign policy, and enacted a further military strike on Venezuelan soil, this time with support from Venezuela’s government.3Malfred Gerig & Federico Fuentes, “US imperialism, Madurismo without Maduro and Venezuelan sovereignty after January 3,” LINKS, January 31, 2026, https://links.org.au/us-imperialism-madurismo-without-maduro-and-venezuelan-sovereignty-after-january-3.
It is difficult to understate the gravity of what is occurring right now in Venezuela or the chilling precedent it sets for the region. Therefore, it is important not just to characterize the current moment but understand why and how this came about. This requires situating January 3 both within the broader context of more than two decades of US imperialist hostility towards the Venezuelan government as well as more recent developments; namely, the US foreign policy shift under Trump, and the collapse in support for the Maduro government.
US foreign policy has undergone a profound shift under Trump. As outlined in the White House’s National Security Strategy, Trump seeks “to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” by securing control over key territories and vital resources.4The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, November 2025, doi.org/10.26797/rpye.vi146.1126, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf. The Trump administration aims to impose full spectrum dominance across the region via military means (as seen in Venezuela), economic means (tariffs, naval blockades, and so on) and political means (open intervention in elections, support for far right parties, and so on).
After initially negotiating with the Maduro government, Trump assessed that removing him from power offered a perfect platform from which to launch his new security strategy. Venezuelan sociologist Malfred Gerig explains: Ideologically, it offer[ed] the defeat of socialism, notwithstanding Maduro’s regime being socialist in name only. Militarily, it offer[ed] a demonstration of firepower and persuasion. Geopolitically, it [wa]s a power move at the table of great powers, something Washington was eager for. Economically, it offer[ed] a substantial oil windfall for the US state and the corporations that financed Trump’s campaigns.5Malfred Gerig and Federico Fuentes, “US imperialism, Madurismo without Maduro and Venezuelan sovereignty after January 3,” LINKS, January 31, 2026, https://links.org.au/us-imperialism-madurismo-without-maduro-and-venezuelan-sovereignty-after-january-3.
Having removed Maduro, Trump plans to use Venezuela as a pivot from which to expand this policy across the region.
That’s the why behind January 3. As for how this was possible, we have to understand that the Maduro government was extremely fragile, offering Trump an easy victory at little cost. The Maduro government was heavily weakened by the 2024 presidential elections, when it refused to publish results verifying its asserted victory—strongly indicating that fraud had been committed. This, combined with the harsh repression meted out against traditionally pro Chavista working class neighborhoods, dramatically exposed the government’s loss of support and lack of legitimacy, domestically and internationally.
The 2024 elections and its aftermath showed the lengths to which the Maduro regime was willing to go to maintain control, choosing to crush its own support base rather than relinquish power.6Manuel Azuaje Reverón, “An inverse transition: Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s first post-Chavista president,” LINKS, June 14, 2026, https://links.org.au/inverse-transition-delcy-rodriguez-venezuelas-first-post-chavista-president. At the same time, it also demonstrated the weakness of the traditional right-wing opposition, which was unable to turn its electoral majority into a movement that could truly challenge the government.
As a result, the Trump administration concluded that any new government—whoever led it—would be highly dependent on the United States and more than willing to go along with its plans in return for maintaining power. US imperialism today deals with the new Delcy Rodríguez government on a fundamentally new footing: one in which all the cards are in Trump’s hands. Trump uses this to humiliate the government by forcing it to administer the protectorate and carry out policies that the US has for a long time envisaged for Venezuela, in the process crushing what remains of the government’s social base.
Rather than condemn the United States’ actions, the Rodriguez government has described the developments following the January 3 attack and abduction as necessary and even positive. The oil and mining law reforms, for example, were announced as government initiatives to promote investment and growth, not the result of US pressure. The government justified the joint US-Venezuela military strike on an alleged drug cartel kingpin inside Venezuelan territory as a demonstration of its commitment to fight organized crime. It has not even criticized US control of Venezuela’s oil income, instead proclaiming that funds it receives will be deposited in “sovereign wealth funds.”
Unsurprisingly, this has split the pro-Maduro left: while some support these actions as either necessary or a sign of the government’s strength, others have accused it of “betraying the revolution.” The common basis for these positions is an incorrect assessment of the nature of the Maduro regime. This assessment is the main difference I have with Geo, which goes beyond specific criticisms of the Maduro and Rodriguez governments.
In his writings, Maher detailed the contradictory, and often contestational, relationship that existed between Chavismo—a political movement of Venezuela’s poor and working class majorities that radicalized to the point of raising the banners of anticapitalism and twenty-first century socialism—and the newly emerging capitalists and political elites who began to consolidate power within the capitalist state apparatus. Straddled across this intrarevolutionary conflict was Chávez and his government, presiding over the movement and the state.
These internal tensions were clearly unsustainable in the long term and would ultimately be resolved through class struggle. Maher’s view is that this same dynamic has persisted right through the Maduro government and continues today under Rodríguez. I disagree. Despite the government’s discourse, clearly at some point during Maduro’s tenure, this intrarevolutionary conflict was decisively resolved to Chavismo’s detriment with the imposition of the interests of this emergent capitalist elite. This also explains the Rodríguez government’s willingness to subordinate itself to US imperialism and accept its terms of administering a protectorate.
This outcome was heavily determined by the actions of US imperialism and the traditional capitalist opposition: sanctions, right-wing political violence and coup attempts may have failed in terms of changing the personnel running the state, but they played a critical role in changing the class basis and political project of the Maduro regime.
Chavismo was a political project of Venezuela’s poor and working class majority; Madurismo today, while continuing to cloak itself in a Chavista discourse (though increasingly less so, and especially since January 3), expresses a political project of this new capitalist political and economic elite, whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of Chavismo.
Despite their opposed locations outside and within the process, US imperialism, the right-wing opposition and Madurismo interacted in such a way as to ultimately kill off the Bolivarian process. This conclusion is not based on “assuming the worst” but it does avoid hoping for the best based on Rodriguez’s past left credentials or those of certain ministers.7Steve Ellner, “Solidarity with Venezuela: The Real Issue is Demonisation, Not Criticism of Maduro,” LINKS, July 23, 2025, https://links.org.au/solidarity-venezuela-real-issue-demonisation-not-criticism-maduro. Instead, it is based on examining all the available evidence to see how the process’s internal tensions grew into antagonistic contradictions that were then resolved in Madurismo’s favor.
All that said, I agree with Maher on the need to consistently oppose US imperialism’s actions toward Venezuela, regardless of one’s views of the Maduro or Rodríguez governments. We cannot lose sight of that bigger picture and take a neutral stance toward US imperialism’s actions simply because we opposed Maduro (and now Rodriguez) or because many Venezuelans were happy to see him go. History offers countless examples of imperialist intervention making bad situations even worse. That is exactly what is happening in Venezuela today.
As I said, the Bolivarian process can only be properly understood if we take the tensions and contradictions between Chavismo and the state into account. Among other things, the PSUV was an attempt by Chávez to overcome this by bringing together revolutionary Chavistas operating in the state apparatus and in the grassroots movement in order to debate and plan out a shared path forward.
While the PSUV represented an important advance compared to earlier political organizations linked to Chávez and the Bolivarian process such as the Movement for a Fifth Republic, it never truly managed to become much more than an electoral machine. Today, it largely functions as little more than a vehicle for mobilizing support for the ruling Madurista elite. This had major consequences in terms of its social base.
In his interview, Geo argues that “the class composition of both opposition voters and opinion has shifted” as “a sector of less politicized Venezuelans have swung toward the opposition.” This is in part true, but paints a far too simplistic picture of what has occurred. It also—intentionally or not—creates the false impression that the reverse is also the case: that the most politicized Venezuelans still back the PSUV. This is not the case.
For a start, nearly every left-wing party that once supported the PSUV now opposes it, as do many former PSUV leaders and Chávez government ministers. While some may have drifted to the right, others represent sectors of Chavismo that today pursue a left-wing politics independent from the government and the right-wing opposition.
More significantly, regular polling, election results, and protest patterns show that most Chavistas have turned their back on the PSUV, even if it has to be acknowledged that an important segment has not. This majority of Venezuela’s poor and working class sectors has not, however, gone over to the opposition, but rather rejects both options. They represent what former communes minister, sociologist, and revolutionary leftist Reinaldo Iturriza calls a “disaffiliated Chavismo.”8Federico Fuentes and Reinaldo Iturriza, “Reinaldo Iturriza: ‘An Important Part of Chavismo Is Demanding Its Rightful Place at the Crest of the Wave,” LINKS, October 31, 2020, https://links.org.au/reinaldo-iturriza-important-part-chavismo-demanding-its-rightful-place-crest-wave.
If we look at the last two elections in which the opposition as a whole competed, and for which we have verifiable results—the 2015 National Assembly elections and 2021 regional elections—we can see this is the case.9Tamara Pearson, “Venezuela: Maduro Concedes Defeat in Assembly Vote—Why the Counter Revolution Won and What it Means for the Revolution,” Green Left, December 6, 2015, https://www.greenleft.org.au/2015/1079/world/venezuela-maduro-concedes-defeat-assembly-vote-why-counter-revolution-won-and-what.; Paul Dobson, “Dominant PSUV Sweeps Venezuela’s ‘Mega-Elections,’” Venezuelanalysis, November 22, 2021, https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15387/. Both elections track large rises in abstention levels alongside a rising opposition vote, leading to the PSUV losing the popular vote.
This same period saw an important rise in “protest of the poor,” which differed considerably from those of preceding years that tended to be focused in middle class areas and openly sought the government’s downfall.10Federico Fuentes, “Venezuela: Could Rebellion in the Ranks Spell Trouble for Maduro?” Green Left, October 18, 2020, https://www.greenleft.org.au/2020/1286/world/venezuela-could-rebellion-ranks-spell-trouble-maduro. Instead, they focused on social demands (rather than Maduro’s resignation) and occurred in areas that traditionally voted for Chávez.
There is no doubt that the deep economic crisis, in large part fuelled by US sanctions, contributed to this discontent. But the Maduro government’s response was to repeat the mantra that it could do nothing about the situation until the sanctions were lifted. In reality, it did do something: implement an extremely orthodox austerity program, particularly from 2018, which ensured working class people shouldered the burden of the crisis. Having pulverised wages and slashed government expenditure from 37 percent to 17 percent of GDP between 2018 to 2024 to deal with hyperinflation, the economy started to recover, but the benefits continued to be unevenly shared. Even a certain loosening of sanctions after the start of the Ukraine War did not bring about any improvement to workers’ daily lives.
Rather than help traditional Chávez-voting sectors, the Maduro government instead stepped up its policing of these neighborhoods through its “Operation Liberate the People” and creation of the elite death squad FAES (Special Action Forces). The result was a dramatic rise in police killings of predominately young Black men in those neighborhoods: from about fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred a year in 2014 to 2015 to five thousand to fifty-five hundred a year between 2016 to 2018, making Venezuela’s security forces the deadliest in the region on a per capita basis.11Ricardo Vaz and Tatuy Tv, “‘Not in Chávez’s Name’: A Critique of Police Violence in Venezuela’s Barrios,” Venezuelanalysis, November 27, 2019, https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14733/.; Alejandra Mohor et al, Monitor of the Use of Lethal Force in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Open Society Foundations, 2024), available at https://muflven.org/monitor-del-uso-de-la-fuerza-letal-en-america-latina-y-el-caribe-2024/.
Though not strictly a political operation, it is hard not to “assume the worst” when faced with these facts and view this repressive policing as a deliberate policy of intimidation against communities that stepped out of line. It is also not hard to understand why, by the time of the 2024 presidential elections, a majority of the population wanted to vote out a government that said it could offer nothing more than repression when it comes to improving people’s daily lives under sanctions.
Geo argues that any possible revolution today “must inevitably come through Chavismo, not against it.” If by Chavismo he means what is left of the political movement of the poor and working class sectors that were once the backbone of the Bolivarian process, then I agree. But, by continuing to equate Chavismo with a government that has done everything in its means to repress this political movement, he does a disservice to the Venezuelan people and their struggles.
The idea that the Maduro government promoted the communes and communal councils is perhaps the most common argument used to defend the government’s “revolutionary” credentials and claim that it continues to follow the path of the Chávez government. It is a good example of the problems of relying on official rhetoric rather than concrete facts.
Of course, answering this question is not as simple as saying communes flourished under Chávez while all the problems began with Maduro. From the very beginning, building and expanding communal power was both the most radical aspect of the Bolivarian process and one of its main points of internal conflict. The reason is simple: by expanding communal power, this inevitably meant that existing state bureaucrats would lose their monopoly on decision making, along with the opportunities for personal enrichment this entailed.
This challenge was so obvious that revolutionaries came up with a term for those bureaucratic elements: la derecha endógena (the endogenous, or internal, right-wing). Community activists increasingly complained that state officials would manipulate or divide communities in their own interests.
Chávez was well aware of this challenge, constantly speaking out against this internal right-wing. In one of his final speeches, he emphasized that despite all the laws, resources and institutions his government had dedicated to building the communes, they were still struggling to grow.12Hugo Chávez, “Strike at the Helm: The First Ministerial Meeting of the First Cycle of the Bolivarian Revolution,” Monthly Review, April 1, 2015, https://mronline.org/2015/04/01/strike-at-the-helm/. He publicly criticized government ministries for failing to do more to support them. Importantly, Chávez pointed not only to the lack of communes but to the absence of what he called “the spirit of the commune” in their work, which he said was “at this point much more important than the commune itself.”
Under Chávez, the core idea behind the communes was collective empowerment and integral human development through self‑organization and self‑government. Communal councils and communes were spaces where individuals and local organizations could debate priorities, make decisions, and work collectively to transform their material conditions. They were encouraged to set up communally owned enterprises, not just to carry out collectively developed projects but to become self sufficient.
To advance this vision, the government introduced policies to strengthen the autonomy of the communes from both the state and the ruling party, sought to transfer state responsibilities to the communes and their communally owned enterprises, and granted them increasing power, such as control over local budgets and public services. Chávez argued that, pushed in this direction, the communes could eventually form the foundations of a new kind of state that would replace the existing capitalist one.
There was, and still is, debate about how much real power the communes had under Chávez and whether institutions funded by the state can ever develop into genuinely independent organs of people’s power. Even so, the overall trend during Chávez’s presidency was clear: communal councils and communes grew in number, gained more authority, and were increasingly viewed not just as organs of self-government but as the seeds of an alternative to the existing capitalist state.
The situation today is starkly different. Not only have their numbers clearly declined, but more importantly, government policies have transformed the communes and communal councils into channels of state-party patronage. And this is not just my view, it is one shared by communes vice minister José Luis Sifontes.
In an interview in late 2024, Sifontes admitted that, under the Maduro government, the activity and momentum of the communal councils “has significantly declined in the past few years.” He explained this was in part due to the deep economic crisis, but acknowledged that government actions were also to blame, such as the deliberate policy of establishing “parallel structures” that weakened communal organizations.13Cira Pascual Marquina, “Putting the People and their Communes First: A Conversation with José Luis Sifontes,” Venezuelanalysis, September 27, 2024, https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/putting-the-people-and-their-communes-first-a-conversation-with-jose-luis-sifontes/.
He cites as an example of this the CLAP food distribution committees “which were appointed by the party and not linked to the communal councils.” This was despite communal councils having a food committee that could have played this role. Subsequent government policies also diminished the role of citizen’s assemblies and ultimately brought these bodies under direct or indirect party control.14John Brown and Atenea Jiménez, “Revitalizing Popular Counterpower in Venezuela: Tensions Between the PSUV and Popular Organizations,” LINKS, June 27, 2025, https://links.org.au/revitalizing-popular-counterpower-venezuela-tensions-between-psuv-and-popular-organizations. Such actions, Sifontes noted, not only “led to the deactivation of many communal councils and communes” but “diminished their original spirit of collective work. All of this eroded the spirit that Chávez instilled in the communes.”
The evidence supports this. In Maduro’s first year as president (2013), the Ministry of Communes reported 39,111 active communal councils.15Frederic B. Mills, “‘The Commune or Nothing: Popular Power and the State in Venezuela,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, September 26, 2013, https://coha.org/the-commune-or-nothing-popular-power-and-the-state-in-venezuela/. According to the ministry’s most recent figures from October 2025, that number has fallen to 36,184, although this figure is misleading. By law, a communal council must reelect its officials every three years to be considered “active.” Over the past three years, only 25,000 communal councils have met this requirement, and the number has been falling sharply each year: 14,103 reelections in 2023, 9,046 in 2024, and only 2,207 by October 2025.
The same pattern appears with communes. In 2013, the Ministry of Communes reported 1,341 registered communes. Today, that number has risen to 3,924. But ministry data from last year shows that fewer than 20 percent of these have any functioning bodies.16Dante Espinoza, “Anti-imperialism and Maduro’s Venezuela: Myths and Facts,” LINKS, July 31, 2025, https://links.org.au/anti-imperialism-and-maduros-venezuela-myths-and-facts. This means fewer than 800 communes can actually be considered operational in any form. More importantly, it raises the question of how the supposed “thousands” of communes, the vast majority of which have no functioning structures, can in any way be organs of direct democracy or self‑government.17Claudia Guerra Mendez, “Presidenta (E) Delcy Rodríguez exhortó a Representates de Condominios y Movimientos Vecinales a sumarse a las consultas nacionales,” Prensa Presidencial Venezuela, June 1, 2026, https://prensapresidencialvenezuela.gob.ve/index.php/2026/03/12/presidenta-e-delcy-rodriguez-exhorto-a-representantes-de-condominios-y-movimientos-vecinales-a-sumarse-a-las-consultas-nacionales/.
Meanwhile, the communes’ powers have been severely reduced. In most cases, communes now do little more than mobilize residents to vote four times a year in consultations on small, government approved local projects. These votes are organized by local PSUV officials, and the results are never published.
Rather than work to fix the problems with the communes, the government today promotes what it calls “communal circuits.” Like communes, these circuits group together communal councils within a community for the purpose of taking part in consultations. But, unlike communes, they explicitly lack any democratic structures. The role of communes has been minimized to such an extent that the Rodriguez government is now talking about including condominium boards and neighborhood associations in these consultations—bodies of property owners that are commonly found in countries such as the United States or Australia but rarely, if ever, viewed as organs of self-government.
So, the overall trend under the Maduro government is clear. There has been a deliberate policy of sidelining communes and communal councils, while seeking to bring them under tighter party-state control. This has led not only to a decline in their numbers but also to the destruction of the original spirit that animated them.
There are, of course, important exceptions, such as the El Maizal commune mentioned by Geo. But when we look at the statistics and the government’s actual policies, we see these cases are not representative of the broader reality. Overall, the only possible conclusion one can draw is that what was once a contestational relationship between the state and the communes has been decisively resolved in favor of “la derecha endogena.” In this sense, it is also worth noting how this term has unsurprisingly disappeared from the government’s discourse. In place of warning of the dangers of reformist and procapitalist forces, the government today is much more concerned with denouncing leftists and promoting slogans such as “to doubt is to betray.”18Edgardo Lanter and Anderson Bean, “Venezuela’s Authoritarian Turn and the Repression of Its Left,” LINKS, September 20, 2025, https://links.org.au/venezuelas-authoritarian-turn-and-repression-its-left-interview-edgardo-lander.
I referred earlier to the Maduro government’s policing of working class communities. But it is also important to look at how Madurismo has deliberately sought to restrict the rights of trade unions and leftist parties.
Daniel Romero’s case is very illustrative in this regard. Romero began his activism as a Chavista student leader in 2002 and joined the PSUV when it was founded in 2007. He later started working at the state‑owned SIDOR steelworks, where he became active in the SUTISS union. During Maduro’s early years in office, Romero supported the government. As a SUTISS leader, he helped dockworkers form their own unions, first in La Guaira in 2015 and then at the national level in 2017.
However, like most Chavistas, Romero grew increasingly disillusioned with the PSUV. In 2021, he ran for mayor of Sifontes in Bolívar state as a candidate for the Communist Party of Venezuela. Polls suggested he had a strong chance of winning. But just days before the election, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) announced that Romero had “renounced” his candidacy—something he publicly denied. As a result, he was barred from running in an election that saw the PCV win three of the seven council seats, a good indication he would have won.
Two years later, Romero took part in a protest at SIDOR demanding better wages and payment of debts owed to workers. He was arrested and, according to his wife, tortured while in custody. He spent the next few years in prison, during which he lost thirty-seven kilos and developed several health problems. Romero was finally released in March under the new amnesty law, although several other workers arrested at the same protest remain behind bars.
The reality is that his story reflects what many trade unionists and left‑wing activists have faced under Maduro. When it comes to workers’ rights, Romero is just one of hundreds of trade unionists jailed for protesting.19Pedro Eusse, “False Anti-imperialism and the Class Struggle in Venezuela,” LINKS, June 9, 2025, https://links.org.au/false-anti-imperialism-and-class-struggle-venezuela. Under Maduro, the registration of new unions has been blocked, strikes have been effectively outlawed, and collective bargaining has largely disappeared. Today, the trade union movement is deeply fragmented. Aside from the government‑controlled Socialist Bolivarian Trade Union Centre (CSBT), most unions are either highly critical of the government or openly opposed to it, with many seeing the right‑wing opposition as a “lesser evil.”
On the political front, the government has used the National Electoral Council (CNE) to strip left-wing parties of their legal status, hand their registrations to government loyalists, and prevent new organizations from registering. This has even included the Communist Party of Venezuela, the country’s oldest active political party. The result of this purge was that, for the first time since the fall of the Marcos Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in 1958, no left-wing party was able to register a presidential candidate in the 2024 elections.
Supporters of Madurismo often point to the PCV’s proscription as a “mistake” that can be criticized, even if they still try to explain it as an error forced upon the government by US imperialism and the right‑wing opposition. But, at some point, we have to recognize the difference between errors and a deliberate strategy. When every single left party is banned, it is safe to assume this is not just a mistake.
No doubt, Chávez also made mistakes in his dealings with unions and left parties, but the general trend under him was toward greater unity on the left and an expansion of labor rights. As with the communes, this simply is not the case under Maduro. Instead, we have a deliberate policy aimed at rolling back democratic rights and suppressing any potential source of leftist dissent or protest.
All the available evidence indicates that the new capitalist elites and its political representatives in the PSUV today—Madurismo—today rule Venezuela, and do so for their own benefit, not those of the Venezuelan people. The exclusive focus on external counterrevolutionary dangers, such as imperialism and the right-wing opposition, have unfortunately led some solidarity activists to miss the fact that the revolution was defeated—but primarily by forces from within. What’s more, this should not be controversial, not just because the evidence is overwhelming, but because it was something that Chávez openly cautioned was not just a real possibility but the biggest danger that the Bolivarian process faced.
During his government, Chávez explicitly warned of the dangers of what came to be popularly known as the emerging boliburguesía (Boli-bourgeoisie, or Bolivarian bourgeoisie), another term that has dropped out of the government’s lexicon. That such a new capitalist class could emerge from within the revolution was only logical.
Ever since the Venezuelan state started collecting oil revenue, the country’s business elites have been dependent on connections with the state to accumulate wealth. This process of fusing power and wealth within the state laid the basis, in part, for the creation of the parasitic capitalist class, represented by the main big business chamber of commerce, Fedecamaras, that sought to overthrow the Chávez government. This traditional capitalist class saw Chávez’s project of downward wealth distribution as a barrier to self enrichment through appropriation of government resources.
But while this traditional capitalist class sought to overthrow Chávez, a new one started to emerge in the shadows of the state, and through much the same pattern. Its presence was graphically exposed during the 2009 banking crisis, when several bankers were jailed for their role in the scandal. When their names were revealed, they were mostly found to be small capitalists who, through their proximity to the government (the most blatant example being Arné Chacón, a former military officer and brother of then Minister for Science, Technology and Intermediate Industries, Jesse Chacón) and access to state contracts (such as Ricardo Fernández Barrueco, whose business interests swelled from supplying food for government programs to owning several banks), had accumulated exorbitant wealth.20Luís Bonilla-Molina, “Bolivarian twilight: The recolonization of Venezuela,” LINKS, June 2, 2026, https://links.org.au/bolivarian-twilight-recolonization-venezuela.
This pattern greatly expanded under Maduro, as his government pursued a policy of consolidating this new capitalist class as its main base of support, alongside the military and security forces. A key vehicle for this was food imports. Through the use of government contracts, access to cheap foreign currency and control of distribution networks, numerous capitalists did not just amass great fortunes but embedded themselves in transnational networks of capital flows. In this sense, the CLAPs not only played a crucial role in developing clientelist relations below but channels of corruption and enrichment above.
Another important sector was the mining industry, which was hugely expanded under extremely opaque conditions. This process involved the establishment of military-run companies, facilitating the insertion of the upper echelons of the armed forces deeper into circuits of capital accumulation. Another was the government’s failed cryptocurrency, the Petro, a channel through which an estimated $20 billion disappeared from public finances between 2018 to 2024.
The government’s procapitalist policies were so successful that, today, it not only counts on the backing of this new capitalist class, but that of the traditional capitalist class, with Fedecamaras having made its peace with the government in more recent years. Madurismo’s policies today are not a mistake nor are critics just “assuming the worst”: they follow a deliberate pattern that clearly expresses the interests of Madurismo’s new support base. The result of these policies are graphically illustrated when we look at the decline in workers’ share of national income, from 42.4 percent when Maduro was elected in 2013 to just 9.8 percent last year.21“Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of,” International Labour Organization | ILOSTAT, accessed June 1, 2026, https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/country-profiles/ven/.
What does all this mean for solidarity? Well, none of this changes our position in terms of opposing imperialism. But it does matter when it comes to how we do solidarity. Geo raised the issue of “selective solidarity”, but there is nothing more selective than supporting struggles for democratic and workers’ rights in some countries, while remaining silent on these, or even justifying government antiworker and antidemocratic actions in others—simply, because we deem those governments to be “anti-imperialist” or “revolutionary.”
Geo insists he is not advocating solidarity with leaders or presidents, but rather “with communities in struggle.” But he immediately qualifies this by telling us that the “organizers” of said communities “understand that—for now—the process relies on the government.” He provides no empirical evidence for this statement, and just assumes we should take his word for it.
But this can only be the case if we ignore (or worse, view as “counterrevolutionary”) the myriad of protests by that disaffiliate Chavismo that today makes up the majority of Venezuela’s poor and working class sectors who no longer support the government but continue to fight for better wages, against environmental destruction, in defense of the right to protest, and so on.
Ironically, those who refuse to acknowledge this reality end up telling Venezuelans “how to make their revolution.” For example: there is strong evidence that traditional Chavista areas not only voted against Madurismo but came out to protest against suspected fraud in the 2024 presidential elections. Faced with this, some solidarity activists opted to close ranks with the “anti-imperialist” Maduro government rather than support Chavista communities struggling to exercise their democratic rights.
Of course, we must continue to explain the role of imperialism—for example, in undermining the democratic nature of those 2024 elections—but “anti-imperialism” cannot become an excuse to whitewash procapitalist regimes or turn a blind eye to the reality of Venezuela today. Anti-imperialist solidarity with Venezuela should not mean pretending that the Maduro government’s actions were simply the fault of US pressure or that any criticism of its antiworker and antileftists actions is telling “Venezuelans how to make their revolution.” This is not just because these arguments are empirically wrong, but because they are ultimately counterproductive.
Firstly, because they are clearly untrue, workers in our country are unlikely to believe us and will instead rightly question the left’s commitment to rights they seek to protect at home. When anti-imperialist activists are silent or misleading about the obvious abuses of authoritarian governments, it only makes it harder to convince workers to break with their own imperialist governments, who most often justify their actions as seeking to protect democracy and rights abroad.
Secondly, because Maduro’s antiworker and antidemocratic policies have weakened anti‑imperialist sentiment inside Venezuela. This is true regardless of whether you think his government was anti-imperialist (just look at the muted response to US imperialism’s attack on January 3 within Venezuela). Defending democratic rights alongside opposing imperialism not only strengthens our ability to build broad solidarity at home; it also helps create the conditions for genuine working class, anti‑imperialist mobilization inside Venezuela.