el_chavista
31st January 2012, 16:19
Throughout the twentieth century, the oligarchy in power and their real masters, the U.S. monopolies, strove in vain to divert our people from the socialist road.
On March 5th 1931, the first communist cell in the country was founded in Caracas, which marks the birth of the Communist Party of Venezuela. This event takes place in the middle of one of the fiercest dictatorships known in Latin America, the one from Juan Vicente Gómez (1908 - 1935). By then, being a communist was considered treason by the Constitution and was punished with 20 years' imprisonment on the crime of “communism.” There is no doubt of the courage, conviction and commitment to the revolution that those comrades who decided to found the PCV had.
The PCV has worked for 80 years of hard struggle in which its membership suffered unjust imprisonment, torture chambers, secrecy, illegality, in applying the teachings of Marxism-Leninism in our national life in order to transform it to form a society of full freedom and rights for the oppressed and exploited working people.
Lenin showed that in the era of imperialism “diverse forms of dependent countries which, politically, are formally independent, but in fact, are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence"( Lenin, “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism”,Selected Works, Vol. I, Progreso, Mo-scow, 1979, p. 751) are typical. At the same time,Lenin said that imperialism is , in the political field, a “striving for annexations..., violence and reaction”2. And it is the world proletariat leader who warns that the savagery in the search for sources of raw materials and the exportation of capital leads capitalism to the“conquest of colonies”.
The Venezuelan people have suffered directly the imperialist oppression, the plundering of their resources and the imposition of tyrannical regimes that were at the service of foreign monopolies. In the 1930's and 1940's thousands of workers employed by the Lago Petroleum Company (LPC) of the Rockefellers and the Venezuelan Oil Concession (VOC) of Morgan and Mellon, suffered cramped, dying of malaria and accidents, tortured by Gomez's police, poorly paid, humiliated and fired, the Indians dispossessed of their land, thousands of women forced into prostitution in the oil fields, agricultural plantations destroyed by the imposition of the oil economy with thousands of farmers into poverty, the Lake Maracaibo ecologically destroyed by the foreign industry and other misfortunes.
As explained by Professor Federico Brito Figueroa, a Venezuelan communist, the fabulous enrichment of the imperialist monopolies increased “the general pauperism in the country and the opulence of the U.S. financial oligarchy”3. Oil imperialism in the twentieth century imposed three reactionary regimes: the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-1935), Perez Jimenez's (1948-1958) and neo-colonial false democracy (1959-1999).
No wonder, therefore, that the PCV has accepted the resolutions of the Communist International (CI) and the classics of Marxism-Leninism in favor of the rights to self-determination and full sovereignty of the peoples.
"At the end of 1936 the First Congress of Workers of Venezuela meets in Caracas, with 219 delegates from all over the country, many of them communists, with great collaboration of veteran comrades in the organization of the Congress and in the preparation of the theses. The Congress ended with the creation of the “Venezuelan Confederation of Labor, CTV” says Comrade Key Sánchez.
The PCV organized the first strike by oil workers in December 1936 to January 1937, which was essentially a struggle against imperialism. “The final assessment of that first year of political and social activity so far in this century was highly positive - Jesús Faria pointed, who was Secretary General of the Communist Party of Venezuela -although it had only been for the number of men and women who joined the class struggle”. He adds, “beyond the results, one important aspect of this strike, the most important event in the struggle against imperialism in re-corded history to date, was the powerful united activity of the working class with all other democratic, patriotic and anti-Gómez sectors of Venezuela”.
On August 8, 1937, seven months after the oil strike ended, the First Conference of the Communist Party of Venezuela was held, where the Party decided to “face the music” and become the Party of the Working Class, independent and wi-th profound internationalist principles. From there, the activism of the PCV will develop with the workers in the perspective of the Socialist Venezuela during the democratic transition which ended in 1952, when a new military coup took place.
On January 23, 1958, the PCV led the overthrow of the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez with the support of the working class and the popular democratic movement. However, the U.S. managed through repression of the trade union movement and the banning of leftist parties, including PCV, to restore the bourgeois representative democratic system that would remain in power until 1999.
In 1958, the PCV promoted a class and popular militant concentration to reject former President Nixon which was about to provoke an intervention by the Marines from their bases in Puerto Rico to his rescue. To widen the various forms of class struggle, the PCV with other anti-imperialist bodies created the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) and the National Liberation Forces (FLN) to confront the regime designed by the U.S. Government.
Therefore, the demand of national liberation is the creative application of Marxism - Leninism to the Venezuelan situation, the core axis of the political agenda since 1935 and the central struggle of tens of thousands of Venezuelan communists and anti-imperialists since 1931. It is the continuation of the struggle for in-dependence and freedom of the indigenous peoples against the Spanish conquerors since the sixteenth century, of the slaves and all our people under the leader-ship of the Liberator Simón Bolívar in the nineteenth century.
The Communist Party of Venezuela is a direct son of the international effort of the working class led by the first successful socialist revolution, the Soviet Revolution, to overthrow capitalism and build a superior civilization. Both the Venezuelan people and the PCV have resisted and overcome in many battles against the class enemy thanks to the wide international solidarity we have received.
From the generous support given to us by Caribbean Bureau of the Communist International (CI), the fraternal assistance of the Communist Party of Colombia to keep safe pursued comrades, the international campaign for the freedom of PCV's President Comrade Gustavo Machado in 1968, to the support from all over the world to our people in the defeat of the criminal fascist coup of 2002.
Therefore, the PCV waves with the same force the two flags of national liberation and proletarian internationalism to which we have sought to contribute.
In 1925, Gustavo Machado founded with Julio Antonio Mella the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas that became the basis for the creation of the Communist Party of Cuba, fought with Sandino in Nicaragua in 1928 and helped Fidel Castro in the 50s to prepare the Granma expedition. Venezuelan comrades fell martyrs in the expedition of 1959 to overthrow the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and a detachment of the Communist Youth arrested in 1964 U.S. Colonel Michael Smolen to require imperialists the immediate release of Vietnamese patriot Van Troi (action that sealed the unbreakable friendship between the peoples of Venezuela and Vietnam).
We supported Chávez's presidential candidacy in 1998 and we have actively supported the anti-imperialist direction of his government and the vast majority of progressive and revolutionary proposals made by the president. At this time the PCV participates with the allied party, the PSUV and other social and political movements, in the construction of a political and electoral Patriotic Alliance. We “naturally” support and promote the Bolivarian Revolution since we consider it the “continuity” of our own history (approved by our 13th Extraordinary Congress in 2007).
On March 5th 1931, the first communist cell in the country was founded in Caracas, which marks the birth of the Communist Party of Venezuela. This event takes place in the middle of one of the fiercest dictatorships known in Latin America, the one from Juan Vicente Gómez (1908 - 1935). By then, being a communist was considered treason by the Constitution and was punished with 20 years' imprisonment on the crime of “communism.” There is no doubt of the courage, conviction and commitment to the revolution that those comrades who decided to found the PCV had.
The PCV has worked for 80 years of hard struggle in which its membership suffered unjust imprisonment, torture chambers, secrecy, illegality, in applying the teachings of Marxism-Leninism in our national life in order to transform it to form a society of full freedom and rights for the oppressed and exploited working people.
Lenin showed that in the era of imperialism “diverse forms of dependent countries which, politically, are formally independent, but in fact, are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence"( Lenin, “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism”,Selected Works, Vol. I, Progreso, Mo-scow, 1979, p. 751) are typical. At the same time,Lenin said that imperialism is , in the political field, a “striving for annexations..., violence and reaction”2. And it is the world proletariat leader who warns that the savagery in the search for sources of raw materials and the exportation of capital leads capitalism to the“conquest of colonies”.
The Venezuelan people have suffered directly the imperialist oppression, the plundering of their resources and the imposition of tyrannical regimes that were at the service of foreign monopolies. In the 1930's and 1940's thousands of workers employed by the Lago Petroleum Company (LPC) of the Rockefellers and the Venezuelan Oil Concession (VOC) of Morgan and Mellon, suffered cramped, dying of malaria and accidents, tortured by Gomez's police, poorly paid, humiliated and fired, the Indians dispossessed of their land, thousands of women forced into prostitution in the oil fields, agricultural plantations destroyed by the imposition of the oil economy with thousands of farmers into poverty, the Lake Maracaibo ecologically destroyed by the foreign industry and other misfortunes.
As explained by Professor Federico Brito Figueroa, a Venezuelan communist, the fabulous enrichment of the imperialist monopolies increased “the general pauperism in the country and the opulence of the U.S. financial oligarchy”3. Oil imperialism in the twentieth century imposed three reactionary regimes: the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-1935), Perez Jimenez's (1948-1958) and neo-colonial false democracy (1959-1999).
No wonder, therefore, that the PCV has accepted the resolutions of the Communist International (CI) and the classics of Marxism-Leninism in favor of the rights to self-determination and full sovereignty of the peoples.
"At the end of 1936 the First Congress of Workers of Venezuela meets in Caracas, with 219 delegates from all over the country, many of them communists, with great collaboration of veteran comrades in the organization of the Congress and in the preparation of the theses. The Congress ended with the creation of the “Venezuelan Confederation of Labor, CTV” says Comrade Key Sánchez.
The PCV organized the first strike by oil workers in December 1936 to January 1937, which was essentially a struggle against imperialism. “The final assessment of that first year of political and social activity so far in this century was highly positive - Jesús Faria pointed, who was Secretary General of the Communist Party of Venezuela -although it had only been for the number of men and women who joined the class struggle”. He adds, “beyond the results, one important aspect of this strike, the most important event in the struggle against imperialism in re-corded history to date, was the powerful united activity of the working class with all other democratic, patriotic and anti-Gómez sectors of Venezuela”.
On August 8, 1937, seven months after the oil strike ended, the First Conference of the Communist Party of Venezuela was held, where the Party decided to “face the music” and become the Party of the Working Class, independent and wi-th profound internationalist principles. From there, the activism of the PCV will develop with the workers in the perspective of the Socialist Venezuela during the democratic transition which ended in 1952, when a new military coup took place.
On January 23, 1958, the PCV led the overthrow of the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez with the support of the working class and the popular democratic movement. However, the U.S. managed through repression of the trade union movement and the banning of leftist parties, including PCV, to restore the bourgeois representative democratic system that would remain in power until 1999.
In 1958, the PCV promoted a class and popular militant concentration to reject former President Nixon which was about to provoke an intervention by the Marines from their bases in Puerto Rico to his rescue. To widen the various forms of class struggle, the PCV with other anti-imperialist bodies created the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) and the National Liberation Forces (FLN) to confront the regime designed by the U.S. Government.
Therefore, the demand of national liberation is the creative application of Marxism - Leninism to the Venezuelan situation, the core axis of the political agenda since 1935 and the central struggle of tens of thousands of Venezuelan communists and anti-imperialists since 1931. It is the continuation of the struggle for in-dependence and freedom of the indigenous peoples against the Spanish conquerors since the sixteenth century, of the slaves and all our people under the leader-ship of the Liberator Simón Bolívar in the nineteenth century.
The Communist Party of Venezuela is a direct son of the international effort of the working class led by the first successful socialist revolution, the Soviet Revolution, to overthrow capitalism and build a superior civilization. Both the Venezuelan people and the PCV have resisted and overcome in many battles against the class enemy thanks to the wide international solidarity we have received.
From the generous support given to us by Caribbean Bureau of the Communist International (CI), the fraternal assistance of the Communist Party of Colombia to keep safe pursued comrades, the international campaign for the freedom of PCV's President Comrade Gustavo Machado in 1968, to the support from all over the world to our people in the defeat of the criminal fascist coup of 2002.
Therefore, the PCV waves with the same force the two flags of national liberation and proletarian internationalism to which we have sought to contribute.
In 1925, Gustavo Machado founded with Julio Antonio Mella the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas that became the basis for the creation of the Communist Party of Cuba, fought with Sandino in Nicaragua in 1928 and helped Fidel Castro in the 50s to prepare the Granma expedition. Venezuelan comrades fell martyrs in the expedition of 1959 to overthrow the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and a detachment of the Communist Youth arrested in 1964 U.S. Colonel Michael Smolen to require imperialists the immediate release of Vietnamese patriot Van Troi (action that sealed the unbreakable friendship between the peoples of Venezuela and Vietnam).
We supported Chávez's presidential candidacy in 1998 and we have actively supported the anti-imperialist direction of his government and the vast majority of progressive and revolutionary proposals made by the president. At this time the PCV participates with the allied party, the PSUV and other social and political movements, in the construction of a political and electoral Patriotic Alliance. We “naturally” support and promote the Bolivarian Revolution since we consider it the “continuity” of our own history (approved by our 13th Extraordinary Congress in 2007).