Marxist thesis: capitulation of Chavismo and possible guerrillas
By: Jose Antonio Hernandez | Tuesday, 01/13/2026 12:25 AM | Printable version
Link https://www.aporrea.org/internacionales/a348653.html
Introduction
After the death of Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan government continued with an anti-imperialist discourse. Today we are witnessing a qualitative break: it is no longer a question of contradictions, zigzags or partial concessions, but of a structural capitulation to the United States.
This capitulation cannot be explained as a sum of "tactical errors", bad conjunctural decisions, irresistible external pressures and above all the renunciation of abolishing capitalism based on the working class. What is underway is a conscious orientation of the ruling elite, whose central objective is not the defense of sovereignty, much less social emancipation, but the preservation of the existing state apparatus and the material privileges of the civil-military bureaucracy that controls it. In this framework, the nation, its resources and its population become bargaining chips in an unequal negotiation with imperialism.
Far from stabilizing the country's situation, this strategy aggravates all the contradictions. The economic, political and geopolitical surrender does not decompress external pressure: it reorganizes it in terms more favorable to U.S. capital. At the same time, it destroys the internal legitimizing narrative and disciplines broad popular sectors in the name of a supposed "resistance." When anti-imperialism is emptied of material content, what remains is a naked State, defending interests that are increasingly alien to the masses.
This text is not based on nostalgia, nor on the uncritical defense of Chavismo, nor on any idealization of the past. Nor does it seek to justify desperate exits or adventures without a horizon. Its objective is to warn: to show that open capitulation does not close the Venezuelan crisis, but opens up more dangerous scenarios, marked by internal fracture, political decomposition and the possible emergence of deformed and reactionary responses to a historical betrayal. Understanding this dynamic is an essential task for any serious Marxist analysis of the present moment.
Capitulation as a process, not as a one-off event
The Venezuelan government's capitulation to the United States cannot be understood as an isolated event, a sudden "turning point," or an exceptional decision made under extreme circumstances. It is, on the contrary, a cumulative process, built step by step through successive concessions that, seen in a fragmented way, could be presented as defensive tactics, but which together configure a complete strategic reorientation.
In the first place, oil – the material axis of Venezuelan sovereignty – has been progressively placed at the center of opaque negotiations, special licenses, asymmetrical agreements and association schemes that subordinate production and marketing to the interests of foreign capital, now particularly that of the United States. It is not just a matter of selling crude oil, but of ceding control, accepting tutelage and normalizing the idea that the survival of the State depends on the benevolence of imperialism.
At the same time, foreign policy has been emptied of any minimally independent content. The "pragmatic" alignment translates into complicit silences, diplomatic setbacks and the progressive distancing – open or covert – of alliances that were previously presented as strategic. The supposed defense of a "multipolar" world is reduced to an empty slogan when, in practice, the subordinate reincorporation into the imperialist order is accepted.
Strategic alliances have also been redefined under this logic. It is no longer a question of agreements between sovereign states, but of forced rearrangements to reassure Washington, expel geopolitical competitors and demonstrate "reliability" in the eyes of international capital. Every gesture in this direction reinforces dependence and weakens the capacity for future maneuver, further closing the margin for any independent policy.
Finally, economic sovereignty – already severely eroded – is sacrificed in the name of "stability". Regressive reforms, de facto labor flexibility, covert privatizations and extraordinary guarantees to capital are justified as necessary evils. But what is consolidated is a state that no longer acts as a defender of the nation, but as an administrator of its defeat, in charge of managing the adaptation of the country to a clearly subordinate position.
Each of these concessions weakens the national-popular narrative. That story does not collapse from one day to the next: it wears out, it is emptied, it loses credibility. When discourse no longer coincides with material practice, legitimacy erodes and political control must be sustained by other means.
That is why it is essential to clearly underline that capitulation to Trump does not prevent the crisis but rather displaces it inwards.
What was previously expressed as external confrontation is now transformed into internal tension, political fracture, demoralization and radicalization without horizon. By renouncing any sovereign and class solution, the government does not stabilize the country: it sows the conditions for a deeper, less controllable and potentially more violent crisis.
Adapted bureaucracy vs. displaced sectors
The deepening of the capitulation does not produce a homogeneous reaction within Chavismo. On the contrary, it accelerates an internal fracture that already existed latently, but which now takes on a more acute and dangerous character. This fracture is not expressed – at least for now – as an open rupture, but as a political and material division between two blocs with increasingly incompatible interests and expectations.
On the one hand, there is the civilian-military leadership, fully integrated into the new order that is being configured. This sector has managed to adapt to the pro-imperialist reorientation because its interests do not depend on national sovereignty or popular support, but on the control of the State, strategic resources and its capacity for direct negotiation with foreign capital. For this faction, capitulation is not a historical tragedy, but a strategy of survival and reproduction. Its anti-imperialism has become purely instrumental: rhetorical downwards, negotiators upwards.
At the opposite extreme are displaced and discontented sectors of Chavismo: middle cadres of the political apparatus, historical militants, officials without access to big business, grassroots sectors and even subordinate armed actors who did not expect the capitulation process to go so far. They are not a homogeneous or politically coherent bloc, but they share a common experience: the feeling of having been used and then discarded in the name of a stability that no longer includes them.
It is essential to underline it unambiguously: this second sector discontented after this shameful capitulation is not the bearer of a class strategy. It carries deep political limitations, a diffuse nationalist vision and a strong dependence on the State that today marginalizes them while they negotiate with Washington. However, what makes them relevant is not their program – which practically does not exist – but their subjective state: they feel betrayed not only in material terms, but also in symbolic and historical terms. For many of them, the capitulation represents a national humiliation and a break with what they thought they were defending.
Here a dangerous phenomenon emerges:
Discontent without a program. In the absence of a Marxist policy, nor an independent class strategy, nor real channels of political dispute, part of this discontent does not translate into conscious organization, but into accumulated resentment, political desperation and the search for "forceful" solutions. It is not a radicalization towards socialism, but towards confused forms of opposition to the new order imposed from above.
This internal fracture is explosive precisely because it is not politically processed. The leadership seeks to close it through discipline, silences and selective repression; The displaced sectors, unable to dispute the course, oscillate between resignation and the temptation of extra-institutional responses. At that point, the crisis ceases to be just a conflict between the State and imperialism to become a crisis within the ruling bloc itself, with unforeseeable consequences.
What is decisive is to understand that this fracture does not automatically open a progressive exit. Without the conscious intervention of the working class as an independent subject and the lack of a Marxist program, discontent without a program does not lead to emancipation, but to scenarios of political decomposition that can take increasingly dangerous forms.
When politics closes, violence appears as an illusion
When a political process systematically closes all avenues of conscious intervention, history shows that violence begins to appear – for certain sectors – as an illusory way out. Not because it is revolutionary, nor because it expresses real force, but because politics has been expelled from the social terrain and replaced by the authoritarian administration of the crisis. In this context, armed action ceases to be a means subordinated to a strategy and is perceived as a substitute for absent politics.
In today's Venezuela, the real political channels are closed. There is no effective internal debate, no possibility of strategic dispute within Chavismo, and no margin for the construction of an alternative on the left. This same ruling bloc has criminalized the combative left. The independent organization of the working class is neutralized, unions are controlled or hollowed out, and any attempt at autonomous articulation is quickly absorbed, delegitimized, or repressed. Politics, understood as conscious collective action of the masses, has been replaced by obedience and management from above.
In this vacuum, some sectors are beginning to confuse radicalism with armed action. Not because they seriously believe they can defeat imperialism or transform society in that way, but because they see no other way to express the rupture. Violence then appears as a gesture, as a shortcut, as a "decisive" act in the face of a reality that seems blocked. It is a radicalism without horizon, which replaces analysis with urgency and strategy with desperation. This ruling leadership is dangerously creating the objective conditions for the emergence of rural or urban guerrillas.
It is essential to reject any romantic or heroic reading of this phenomenon. It is not a question of a "return to struggle", nor of a reappearance of revolutionary combativeness. It is, on the contrary, a symptom of historical deadlock. When class politics disappears, violence does not emerge as a conscious instrument of transformation, but as a deformed expression of impotence. It does not open paths: it closes them even more.
From Marxism, this point is central and must be formulated unambiguously, when there is no class politics, violence appears as a deformed substitute for revolutionary action.
That violence does not arise from the organized strength of the working class, but from its absence as a subject. It is not based on the conscious mobilization of the masses, but on isolated nuclei that act in the name of an abstract radicalism. And precisely for this reason, far from challenging the existing order, it ends up reinforcing it: it justifies repression, legitimizes authoritarian control and facilitates external intervention under the discourse of "order" and "security".
Thus, the illusion of armed struggle is not an alternative to the political closure that we are experiencing today, but one of its most regressive consequences. It does not express a revolutionary way out, but the failure of a process that, by denying class politics, pushes disoriented sectors into dead ends.
What kind of groups could emerge?
If the dynamics described are deepened – sustained capitulation, closure of politics, great discontent without a program – the eventual emergence of armed groups should not be analyzed in military or tactical terms, but in political and social terms. What is decisive is not how they would act, but what they would represent in the general picture of the Venezuelan crisis.
Firstly, they would be in the minority. They would not emerge from a massive mobilization of the working class or from a process of conscious popular self-organization, but from small nuclei, split from the state apparatus (such as the Colectivos) or from its political periphery. Its existence would express a partial rupture, not a broad social movement with the capacity to dispute hegemony.
Second, they would be fragmented. The absence of a coherent programme and a centralised political leadership would prevent any strategic unification. The most likely thing would be the coexistence of dispersed groups, without organic coordination, with different – and often contradictory – readings of the main enemy, the objectives and the means. This fragmentation is not accidental: it is the direct reflection of the decomposition of the ruling political bloc from which they emerge.
Thirdly, they would lack an organised workers' base. This point is decisive from a Marxist perspective. Without independent trade unions, without organs of mass power, without real insertion in production and in the daily life of the working class, these groups could not act as an expression of class interests. Their relationship with the people would be, at best, indirect and symbolic, and at worst, completely alien.
Ideologically, they would be traversed by a profound confusion. His discourse would combine elements of wounded nationalism, abstract anti-imperialism, broken loyalties, and nostalgic references to an idealized past. But this mixture is not a conscious reflection of the class struggle, but a moral and political reaction to perceived betrayal. The absence of a Marxist perspective condemns them to oscillate between radical slogans and politically impotent practices.
For all these reasons, it is essential to reject any automatic identification between the appearance of these groups and a "resumption of the revolutionary struggle". We would not be dealing with revolutionary guerrillas in the historical sense of the term, nor with instruments of social emancipation. We would be facing armed expressions of the decomposition of the regime, products of a process that has destroyed both real sovereignty and the possibility of a conscious class response.
In that sense, its eventual emergence would not signal a way out, but the depth of the crisis. It would not indicate political strength, but the vacuum left by the capitulation and closure of politics. Understanding this difference is essential so as not to confuse tragic consequences with historical alternatives.
A disastrous road
The eventual emergence of armed groups without a class base or revolutionary strategy does not constitute a real threat to imperialism. On the contrary, it tends to strengthen their position, both at the political, ideological and operational levels. This statement may seem counterintuitive to radicalized sectors, but it is solidly grounded in historical experience and in the Marxist analysis of contemporary imperialist power.
First, these groups facilitate repression. The existence of isolated armed foci allows the State – and its external allies – to justify the tightening of political control, the criminalization of dissent and the preventive neutralization of any form of autonomous social organization. Under the pretext of "security", repressive powers are expanded and spaces for collective action are further closed. In this scenario, repression does not distinguish between minority armed violence and legitimate social protest: everything is subsumed under the same logic of order.
Second, these groups legitimize imperialist tutelage. Imperialism does not need to demonstrate its domination only with tanks or sanctions; it is enough for him to construct a narrative of a "failed state", "terrorist threat" or "chronic instability" to intervene, condition and supervise. The emergence of disjointed political violence feeds into this narrative, offering the perfect alibi for greater external interference, whether direct or indirect. What is presented as resistance ends up functioning as an argument for political occupation.
Third, this pathway isolates any real social resistance. The working class and the popular sectors – already hit by the crisis – tend to distance themselves from dynamics that they perceive as alien, dangerous or without horizon. Violence without a project does not summon: it intimidates or demobilizes. Instead of broadening the social base of the struggle against imperialism and capitulation, it shrinks, fragments it, and pushes the masses to seek refuge in the "lesser evil" or in passivity.
The fundamental error consists in overestimating the impact of isolated violence and underestimating the absorption capacity of imperialism. The great powers are not afraid of armed foci without the insertion of the masses; they manage them. They infiltrate them, surround them, wear them down and, above all, make them part of the problem they claim to come to solve. Meanwhile, time is on their side: agreements are consolidated, economies are reordered and subordination is normalized.
That is why the warning must be formulated very clearly, and that classless violence does not weaken imperialism. On the contrary, it gives him arguments and time.
It does not confront the core of power, it does not break structural dependence, it does not build an alternative. On the contrary, it diverts attention from the decisive terrain, which is the conscious and independent organization of the working class. Without this subject, all violence becomes functional to the order it claims to combat.
The great absentee. The working class as an independent subject
Any serious analysis of the Venezuelan crisis must underline a central fact: the absence of the working class as an independent political subject. This absence is not an accident or a simple short-term weakness; it is the condition that allows capitulation to be consolidated, radicalization to be deformed, and isolated violence not to have an emancipatory impact.
Currently, there are no autonomous workers' power bodies, capable of disputing fundamental economic or political decisions. The unions and workers' councils, if they are maintained, have been co-opted, dismantled or emptied of class content, functioning more as instruments of the state than as organs of self-organization of the working class. Nor is there workers' control over production, which is the material mechanism that would allow workers to influence the economy and condition politics. Finally, there is no revolutionary party capable of unifying, orienting and articulating class struggles towards strategic objectives.
The consequence is clear: without an organized and independent working class, there is no possible revolution. What may arise instead are two deformed phenomena:
1. Crisis managed from above, where capitulation and structural dependence are justified as "pragmatic" solutions while avoiding any real challenge to order.
2. Violent decomposition, where frustrated sectors act out of impulse, resentment or a sense of betrayal, without class coordination, generating fragmentation and chaos.
This section is crucial because it marks the difference between militaristic violence and conscious revolutionary action. While the former arises from impotence and produces regressive effects, the latter depends on the independent organization of the working class, capable of transforming the relationship of forces and disputing real power. Without this factor, any form of violence, no matter how intense, reinforces dependence and decomposition, and does not open up any progressive historical way out.
In other words, the key is not in who has weapons or in who is radicalized, but in who has the capacity to act as a collective and strategic subject: the organized working class. Any analysis that ignores this risks confusing desperate gestures with revolutionary alternatives, and that is the danger we must underline in this context.
The example of post-independence Algeria (1960s)
After Algeria's independence in 1962, after more than seven years of struggle against French colonialism, the National Liberation Front (FLN) assumed central power throughout the country. From the outset, the FLN leadership sought to consolidate a strong, centralized state, ensuring control over politics, the economy, and the armed forces, and guaranteeing its authority in the face of any internal challenge.
However, the construction of this centralized state was not homogeneous or accepted by all the actors who had participated in the liberation struggle. Sectors of the FLN – historical militants, intermediate cadres, local combat chiefs and urban or mountain guerrillas – began to perceive that the central leadership had betrayed the objectives of the revolution. The consolidation of the central bureaucracy was being prioritized, rather than the social and economic emancipation of the population.
The decisions of the central FLN were often subordinated to international diplomatic and economic interests, mainly in the search for recognition and stability before France and other powers, sacrificing internal social claims.
Many militants hoped that the revolution would transform society and promote popular participation, but the leadership imposed authoritarian control, leaving very little room for local autonomy.
In response, splits emerged: small armed groups or nuclei of militants who operated on the margins of the central FLN, trying to maintain what they considered the original values of independence. These splits shared some important characteristics: they were minority and fragmented.
They had no central coordination, nor a unified leadership that could articulate a coherent political plan. They acted in a dispersed manner, in cities or rural regions, without the capacity for national incidence. They lacked a broad popular base and a Marxist program.
The majority of the population was politically neutralized, war-fatigued, and organized under the control of the central FLN. These splits failed to mobilize the working class and peasants beyond their immediate cores. They were not a class-conscious subject. Their action arose from a sense of betrayal and frustration, not from a strategic program of socialist emancipation. Its aims were often diffuse, mixing nationalism, abstract anti-imperialism and vindication of historical ideals of the anti-colonial struggle.
The historic result was clear. The groups were neutralized or absorbed by the central bureaucracy of the FLN. Its existence justified the consolidation of a strong state, which used the threat of armed violence to legitimize internal repression and political centralization.
The lack of an organized class subject meant that no action by these groups could really challenge the new order or transform the material conditions of society.
In Marxist terms, this case perfectly illustrates a danger that can be repeated in Venezuela.
Displaced sectors of Chavismo that feel betrayed by the capitulation to the U.S. can become radicalized. Without an organized working class and a revolutionary party that articulates the social struggle, any violence or split does not weaken imperialism or change dependency, but strengthens the bureaucracy and justifies repression. Radicalization without a Marxist program is a symptom of the decomposition of the regime, not an emancipatory alternative.
Key lesson for Venezuela
When the leadership of a governmental bloc betrays its historical objectives, the displaced sectors can react with violence, but without an organized class, this violence only reinforces the central power and facilitates external intervention. Algeria's history shows that isolated radicalisation is functional to the dominant bloc, not to the emancipation of the people.
Lenin emphasized the need for mass support and organization:
"Any revolutionary action that lacks the support of the proletarian masses is impotent and is doomed to become a heroic but isolated act, useful only for the repression of the enemy." (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, 1902)
This quote clearly illustrates that the displaced sectors of Chavismo could not confront imperialism without an organized class.
Furthermore, Lenin stressed that the revolution does not depend on small groups acting in isolation:
"The revolution is not made by conspiracies of small groups, nor by isolated blows of force; The revolution is made when the working masses are organized and conscious of their interests." (Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917)
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