A teleconference of the parties participating in the "International Communist Review", regarding developments in Venezuela and the solidarity with the people and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), was held on October 9, 2020, on the initiative of the KKE, in consultation with the PCV.

During the teleconference, Oscar Figuera, GS of the CC of the PCV, briefed the ICR parties on the developments in Venezuela and the position of the PCV, answered questions from ICR party representatives, while brief statements were made by the parties.

Extracts of the contribution of G. Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE, read as follows:

“The KKE firmly stands by the side of the CP of Venezuela and the Venezuelan people. It denounces the imperialist intervention by the USA, the EU and their allies, who, together with reactionary forces in Venezuela, try to control developments, to overthrow the elected president and impose the puppet of imperialism, Guaidó.

Their aim is to exploit the wealth-producing resources of the country in favour of US-EU monopolies in competition with Chinese and Russian interests in Venezuela and in Latin America in general, with negative consequences for the people.

We denounce the attacks against the CP of Venezuela, the policy of authoritarianism and repression. The government of Venezuela has huge responsibilities and it is once again confirmed that social-democracy has always resorted to these dangerous methods against the communists and the class struggle, as a defender of capitalist interests and capitalist management, in all countries.

In Greece, we have rich experience of authoritarianism, repression and anti-communism, both by ND conservative governments as well as during the governance of the social democratic parties of PASOK and SYRIZA.

We would like to note that the initiative of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the General Socialist Confederation to create a so-called “Anti-imperialist Platform of the Working Class”, as a point of international reference, gives us a very negative impression.

We believe that it has no objective ground and is an effort to entrap massive organizations, even CPs, to a social-democratic framework of capitalist management, embellished with some anti-imperialist slogans. It furthermore puts more obstacles to the action of the World Federation of Trade Unions, the World Peace Council, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, in the effort of the CPs for international cooperation, in the struggle against monopolies and capitalism.

In this platform, capitalist barbarism is masked behind references to neo-liberalism. The system and the social democratic anti-popular management that perpetuates the exploitation of man by man are whitewashed. Socialism and its principles are degraded and distorted.

The developments in Venezuela and in Latin America in general, allow us to draw useful conclusions.

The KKE, from the first years that Chavez assumed government responsibilities, noted that in a short period of time it would be proven whether this process would move forward and would favour the development of the class struggle or would stagnate and the management of capitalism would continue.

The facts have shown that in Venezuela the exploitative system is maintained, power is in the hands of monopolies, conditions of a deep capitalist crisis prevail, together with the pandemic and imperialist aggression, with painful consequences for the life of the working class and the popular strata.

Capitalism has rotted and our era is an era of transition to Socialism.

The experience gained emphasizes that political power will be either workers’-proletarian or bourgeois, any intermediate solutions have no objective basis, and any such attempt is bankrupt.

Socialism has laws and there is no sense in socialism without workers’ power, without social ownership of the concentrated means of production, without central scientific planning. There is no sense in socialism with monopolies and capitalist market, with labor power being a commodity.

We study and analyze capitalism in its imperialist stage, on the basis of the main criterion of the prevailing of monopolies and the maturing of the material preconditions for socialist construction. We struggle for Socialism-Communism and not for its caricature, we struggle for growth that will satisfy people’s needs and not the capitalist profit. These crucial issues are components of communist strategy, the strategy of the CPs.”

20.10.2020