Venezuela: what has really happened and what may lie ahead (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Venezuela has once again been making headlines around the world. Explosions, military movements, international pressure, mutual accusations and a great deal of confusion. To understand what has happened so far, it is necessary to look beyond the propaganda, both from the Venezuelan government and the US, and from those who defend one gang or the other.

It’s nothing to do with democracy or freedom

The first thing that needs to be made clear is this: the US is not acting out of a desire to defend the Venezuelan people, nor out of love for democracy or human rights. We have seen this many times before in other countries. When a major power intervenes, directly or indirectly, it does so to defend its own economic and strategic interests.

Talk of fighting drug trafficking or restoring democracy serves to justify actions that, at heart, are about political control, natural resources and regional power.

Nor is it about defending ‘sovereignty’

On the other hand, the Venezuelan government and its allies present what has happened as an imperialist attack on national sovereignty. But here is another uncomfortable truth: the Venezuelan state does not represent the interests of the majority of the working class.

For years, millions of people have suffered from inflation, low wages, forced emigration, deteriorating services and repression. All this happened without direct foreign intervention, under a government that claimed to rule on behalf of the people.

Will there be any real change?

There is much talk of ‘regime change’, but in reality what is happening is, at most, a change of administrators within the same system.

As long as there is:

• wage labour,
• production for the market,
• social inequality,
• a state that protects the property and power of a minority,

the lives of the majority will not fundamentally change. Changing a president or a ruling group does not change the system that produces poverty and insecurity.

Will there be more attacks or more pressure?

No one can predict exactly what will happen, but there is a clear logic: as long as Venezuela remains a strategic country because of its oil and geographical position, the pressure will continue, whether military, economic or diplomatic.

This does not depend on whether a government is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but on how states function in a capitalist world in constant competition.

The role of China and other powers

Some believe that China or Russia are a fairer alternative to the United States. But these powers do not act out of solidarity, but out of their own interests. China invests, lends money and negotiates to secure access to resources, economic benefits and international influence.

It is not a struggle between good and evil, but a dispute between great powers, where the workers get caught in the middle.

Internal betrayal?

There is much talk of betrayal, but such language tends to confuse more than it clarifies.

High-ranking officials, the generals and politicians do not betray the people, because they have never governed on their behalf, but rather in accordance with their own interests and privileges. When they switch sides or negotiate, they do so to protect their position, not to improve the lives of the majority.

Who loses out in all this?

The answer is clear: the working class in Venezuela, as well as in the United States and other countries.

Workers do not decide on wars, they do not benefit from sanctions, they do not control resources, and they always pay the price with more insecurity and less of a future.

An uncomfortable but necessary conclusion

What is happening in Venezuela will not be resolved by choosing between Maduro or the US, nor between Washington or Beijing. They all operate within the same system, a system that puts profit and power above human needs. As long as that system remains intact, crises will repeat themselves, with different names and different countries, but with the same losers.

The real solution will not come from leaders, armies or foreign powers, but from the conscious organisation of ordinary people, here and around the world, to build a society where production and wealth are at the service of all and not just a few.

SOCIALISTA MUNDIAL

(Translated from a contribution to a discussion on our Spanish-language Facebook page)

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In almost all regions of the world, the top 1% of the population is richer than the combined 90%. Wealth inequality increases further with each passing day, mostly due to the lack of political will to stop it.

[Popular Resistance]

In China, inequality remains high… The top 10% of earners capture about 43% of national income, while the bottom 50% receive just 14%. Wealth disparities are particularly large, with the richest 10% holding nearly 68% of total wealth and the top 1% about 30%. 

[World Inequality Report]

Nearly half of Kenyans live in extreme poverty, i.e., on less than KES 130 [£0.75] per day. Yet a few have amassed enormous wealth. The richest 125 Kenyans have more wealth than more than three-quarters of Kenyans, about 43 million people. 

[Oxfam]

We celebrate the ‘recovery’ of fish populations that are stabilized at 5% or 10% of their historical population, mistaking the management of ruins for conservation. To understand the magnitude of what has been stolen, we must look back before the industrial age. In the 17th century, the ocean was a different planet. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the Caribbean in the late 15th century, he described the seas near Cuba as being ‘thick with turtles’, so numerous that it seemed his ships would run aground on them… in numbers estimated between 33 and 39 million adults in the Caribbean alone. They were a biological dominance that defined the seascape. Today, those populations are a shadow of the ‘mother sea’ that once existed. This report is an autopsy of the decline. It is an investigation into the specific species that the fishing industry has sacrificed on the altar of commerce. 

[Sea Piracy]

As both the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) monitor and Reuters noted, Poland is among multiple state parties in the process of ditching the Mine Ban Treaty. Citing the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the news agency reported that “antipersonnel mine production could begin once the treaty’s six month withdrawal period is completed on February 20, 2026”. 

[Common Dreams]

Greenpeace is a strong example, having emerged from ecological protest movements in the 1970s and 1980s, but having eased into largely cooperating with capitalist corporations and governments over time and giving legitimacy to their propaganda about individual lifestyle choices being the way to solve climate change.

[Counterfire]

The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, which has previously slammed vaccine skeptic Kennedy as a ‘paranoid kook’ whose ‘tinfoil hat is blocking out all sense’, tore into the Trump Cabinet member for his war on what it called ‘one of the biggest public health wins of the last century: the widespread use of disease-eradicating vaccines’. 

[HuffPost]

Therefore, we do not offer any support to wars waged by any capitalist state or any faction aimed at creating or strengthening a new state, whether aggressor or aggressed, whether or not they describe themselves as ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic’. 

[Internationalist Perspective]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

The Socialist Party's 2026 Summer School: Populism

Party News from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

If ‘populism’ is taken to mean politics popular with the majority pitched against an élite minority, should socialists aim to make socialism ‘populist’? Certainly socialists work to make socialism popular globally with the majority, but without pandering to notions that would negate its revolutionary goal. This means being opposed to ideas that might attract wide support in the short term while actively undermining the socialist case. Because ‘populism’ remains ill-defined, it gets applied to a right wing group such as Reform UK, or a left wing organisation like Your Party. In the USA, Donald Trump’s Republican Party can be termed ‘populist’ as might Bernie Sanders’ variety of leftism, and similar examples are found in Europe and elsewhere. Is ‘populism’ simply st reformism repackaged for the 21 century?

The Socialist Party’s weekend of talks and discussion will explore how the concept of ‘populism’ has developed, why it attracts support and what this tells us about capitalist society.

Our venue is the University of Worcester, St John's Campus, Henwick Grove, St John's, Worcester, WR2 6AJ.

Full residential cost (including accommodation and meals Friday evening to Sunday afternoon) is £150; the concessionary rate is £80. Book online at spgb.net/ summer-school-2026 or send a cheque (payable to the Socialist Party of Great Britain) with your contact details to Summer School, The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN. Day visitors are welcome, but please e-mail for details in advance. E-mail enquiries to spgbschool@yahoo.co.uk.

Coping with losing (2026)

Book Review from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Burnout: the Emotional Experience of Political Defeat. By Hannah Proctor. Verso £14.99.

In May 1871 the Paris Commune was brutally repressed, with many people executed and over four thousand of its supporters exiled to New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific Ocean, 750 miles east of Australia. Unsurprisingly, many of those exiled experienced feelings of hopelessness and despair. These were examples of what the author terms ‘pathological nostalgia’, which she contrasts with ‘political nostalgia’, which ‘looks to the future rather than the past’.

Nostalgia is one example of the different emotions identified here, the others being melancholia, depression, burnout, exhaustion, bitterness, trauma and mourning, though the distinctions among these are not always clear. The focus is on left-wing movements, where prolonged activity, with little achieved, can lead to exhaustion and disillusion. One woman, who had campaigned in the US on abortion issues, found herself in the 1980s with no partner, children or secure job, and wondered if it had all been a waste of time. On the other hand, many women who played an active role in supporting the UK miners’ strike felt really changed by it, meeting new people and becoming aware of the unjust nature of the British state. One woman (wife and mother of miners) found that contributing at the local soup kitchen helped combat her agoraphobia, saying, ‘I know that I’ve got to keep active after the strike.’

There is an interesting if somewhat unclear discussion of the impact of the Bolshevik takeover of 1917 (about which Proctor says ‘the October Revolution was not defeated’). The ensuing civil war, coupled with pre-1917 events, meant years of violence and famine, which ‘took a heavy physical and mental toll’. Many former activists became exhausted, in some cases this was due to ‘despair over the course the new society was taking’ (some more detail here would have been helpful). In 1921–2 over fourteen thousand people voluntarily left the Bolshevik party, and ‘there was a spate of suicides among the membership.’

Some left-wing groups go in for abuse and bullying (sometimes of close friends), while criticism and self-criticism sessions among the Weathermen in the US in the 1960s and 70s could inflict serious psychological damage on members. In the US ‘Communist’ Party, those who left could find themselves simply ignored in the street by those who had stayed on.

Proctor quotes Rosa Luxemburg as saying that revolutionary struggle involves thunderous defeats but will lead inexorably to final victory. Perhaps more realistic is her comment on the famous last words of Joe Hill: better to both mourn and organise.

Paul Bennett

Material World: A Socialist Future: How it works and how society is organised (2026)

The Material World column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is not a reform of capitalism nor a system of state management exercised by a minority. It is a fundamentally different form of society based on common ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth, democratic control by the whole community, and production carried out directly for use rather than for sale and profit.

At the centre of this vision is the principle articulated by Karl Marx in Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875): ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. This is not an ethical command enforced by authority, but a description of how social relations can function once class divisions, markets, and material insecurity have been overcome.

How the socialist system functions

In a socialist society, land, industry, transport, and infrastructure are held in common by society as a whole. No individual, corporation, or state body owns productive resources as private property. As a result, the wages system disappears, along with money, buying and selling, and the accumulation of profit.

Production is organised solely to meet human needs. The immense productive powers already developed under capitalism—science, technology, automation, and global logistics—can be consciously redirected toward ensuring that everyone has free access to food, housing, healthcare, education, and cultural resources. Freed from the constraints of profit, production becomes rational, sustainable, and humane.

Individuals contribute according to their abilities and inclinations. Work is no longer forced by economic necessity but becomes a cooperative social activity. Distribution is based on need rather than purchasing power, reflecting the real material requirements of human life.

Democratic organisation and coordination

Socialist society is organised democratically from the bottom up. Communities and workplaces collectively decide priorities and communicate their needs and capacities. These decisions are coordinated at wider levels to ensure efficient use of resources and to avoid duplication or waste.

This is not rule by planners standing above society. It is society consciously planning itself. Modern information systems already demonstrate the technical feasibility of coordinating complex production on a global scale. In socialism, such coordination is transparent and accountable, serving human needs rather than profit or power.

Political structure and the end of class rule

Because socialism abolishes class ownership, it also abolishes the political structures designed to maintain class power. The state, understood as an instrument of coercion and domination, becomes unnecessary. What remains are administrative and coordinating bodies tasked with carrying out collectively agreed decisions.

Delegates are elected, mandated, and recallable. They do not rule; they serve. There is no permanent political elite, no professional governing class, and no separation between those who make decisions and those who live with the consequences. Political activity becomes an aspect of everyday social life rather than a specialised career.

The Paris Commune: A historical example

A glimpse of this kind of organisation was seen in the Paris Commune of 1871. For a brief period, working people took collective control of the city and replaced the existing state machinery with directly accountable institutions. Officials were elected and recallable, paid workers’ wages, and combined legislative and administrative functions rather than standing above society as a separate authority.

Although the Commune existed under extreme conditions and did not abolish capitalism, it demonstrated essential socialist principles in practice: popular control, the dismantling of hierarchical state power, and the replacement of rule by administration. Its significance lies not in its limitations, but in showing that ordinary people can organise society themselves without a ruling class.

Freedom, equality, and human development

Socialism expands freedom by removing the economic compulsion that dominates life under capitalism. With secure access to the means of life, individuals are free to develop their abilities, participate meaningfully in social decision-making, and shape their own lives. Equality means equal access to resources and equal standing in society, not enforced uniformity.

In such a society, politics and economics are no longer separate spheres. Society consciously regulates its productive activity, its relationship with nature, and its social priorities. Cooperation replaces competition, and production for use replaces production for profit.

Socialism, understood in this way, is not imposed by leaders or institutions. It can only be created by a conscious majority acting in its own interests. It represents the collective self-emancipation of humanity and the practical realisation of a society guided by the principle: ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’.

Jake Ambrose, 

Australia

Socialist Sonnet No. 219: Security (2026)

    From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Security

 

More guns, bigger bombs, longer range missiles,

Thicker armour, smarter drones, firm allies,

Control of the land, the oceans, the skies,

Compliant nation of bellumophiles,

A leader blessed with infallibility,

Martialled prelates to assure the laity

That they have conscripted the deity;

Add political instability.

Meanwhile the bottom-liners try to gauge

Where the rarest rare earth minerals lie,

The cost/benefit of those who will die

And the profits to be made from carnage.

Behind rhetoric, where’s the surety?

Only real change can secure security.

 D. A.