The regime’s unions keep workers in a state of paralysis. The government and the parties that support it mobilize workers only to subject them to their media campaigns and their bourgeois-democratic and patriotic slogans. In general, the current unions in Venezuela offer no space for penetration, as they are very limited by their observance of the law and opportunistic political control.

Between July 2024 and July 2025, the Venezuelan state held successive elections to distract workers from their demands and to prevent those very demands from developing into a political crisis. This process was accompanied by repression and, despite the obvious discontent of workers (both employed and unemployed), in the absence of militant unions and under the influence of a diverse range of left-wing and right-wing parties, both of which spread legalistic, nationalist, patriotic, and electoral democratic rhetoric, no significant struggles have arisen. Few would be surprised if the pressure on workers and oppressed social strata were to result in a futile anarchic revolt.

Chavismo has gained control of all public powers, the parliament, and regional and local governments, and is trying to maintain the political initiative in the streets.

The right-wing opposition, both those who openly declare themselves in favor of US intervention and those who have joined the government in calling for the defense of sovereignty and the homeland, are unable to establish themselves as an alternative government, while promoting propaganda initiatives to deceive the masses, as Chavismo is doing.

The US military deployment in the Caribbean has become an opportunity for the bourgeoisie to fuel patriotism, calling on workers to enlist in the militias. This propaganda fails to penetrate the broad masses (which does not mean that they have a “revolutionary consciousness”, as some opportunists claim), but, this cynical and demagogic invocation of “armed struggle” opens the door to the militarization of society, aimed not at repelling foreign invasion, but containing the potential emergence of a class uprising, which would truly be a threat to the capitalist system in general, and in particular to the plans for acquisitions and profitable investments for transnational capital.

With the slogan “Long live the armed struggle!”, the ruling party (PSUV) calls for the formation of militias and the preparation of a guerrilla movement based on the communes. It even refers to the Vietnamese experience. In this way, it is mobilizing its social base, evoking revolutionary language and inviting them to take on the role of a “vanguard”, which means maintaining internal peace between the classes which is the negation of class struggle. The external enemy is feared when the real class enemies are within, namely the bourgeoisie, the landowners, and their parties. The expected result will be the strengthening of the military-police apparatus (and the militias) against the working class.

Opposition to this bourgeois tactic in Venezuela is the primary responsibility of the revolutionary party, which does not shirk its duties despite the unfavorable conditions.

Chavismo also takes the initiative by promoting from above and imposing a “Trade Union Constituent Assembly” and a “Peasant Congress” for the political and organizational subordination of trade unions and peasant organizations to the dictates of the government. Among the peasants, through the Ministry of Agriculture, it has promoted the establishment of the “Ezequiel Zamora National Peasant Union”, on which it has imposed the objective of “production and defense of sovereignty”, that is, to divert them from confronting the landowners and integrate them into the militias, subject to the government’s guidelines. In the case of the labor movement, the “Trade Union Constituent Assembly” is moving in the same direction, ensuring the submission of workers to the national economy, guaranteeing the operational continuity of businesses, and placing the words “defense of the homeland and sovereignty” above basic class demands.

It remains to be seen to what extent this tactic will achieve its objectives, both in the event of a military invasion by the United States, and without one.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Latin America, some governments are trying to take advantage of this situation to return to promoting their hypocritical “anti-imperialism”, such as Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Brazil, always with the aim of exposing their “leftist” image and fueling their electoral support.

Throughout Latin America, the regime’s unions and opportunistic parties of the right and left are sinking into the quagmire of parliamentarianism, legalism, and the defense of the Constitution, the homeland, and the national economy.

In Brazil, the trade union movement and the parties that influence it have integrated themselves into Lula’s government “to curb the advance of the right” (as if Lula’s government favored the working class). In Argentina, the trade union movement mobilizes workers, but because it is forced to do so by the pressure of discontent, it tries to divert them toward bourgeois democratic solutions, in isolated actions and without offering space for debate in the grassroots assemblies. In Colombia, Chile, and Bolivia, the trade union federations, with minor differences, align themselves with the government in power and its political initiatives. And so it is throughout the continent.

Of course, the deterioration in the material living conditions of the working class, resulting from the anti-crisis policies of the bourgeoisie, is pushing wage earners in the region to fight against the bosses for jobs and better working conditions. Each of the measures adopted by governments to curb the class struggle has an increasingly short duration and impact. In this context, the role of the International Communist Party in providing the workers’ movement with a revolutionary leadership, enabling it to break with the factors that today paralyze and disorient it, takes on particular importance.