Imperial Bargain & Bureaucratic Betrayal in Venezuela

State capitalism, Maduro, and the Marxist case against the Bolivarian left

The bombs fell on Caracas at 2am. By dawn, Nicolás Maduro and his wife were reportedly in American custody, en route to face narcoterrorism charges drafted six years earlier. Thirty-five years to the day since Manuel Noriega surrendered in Panama. The symmetry is theatrical. The reality may be rather different.

Here is what we know. Strikes hit Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela's largest military complex, along with targets in Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez demanded "proof of life" from Washington. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López called for "massive deployment" of military forces. Trump called it a "brilliant operation" and scheduled a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.

Here is what we do not know, but increasingly suspect: whether this was an extraction at all, or a negotiated surrender dressed in military theatre.

A Negotiated Exit?

The evidence accumulates. Throughout late 2025, Maduro was offering "major stakes" in Venezuelan oil to American majors in exchange for an exit ramp. His rhetoric shifted from revolutionary defiance to transactional accommodation: "If they want oil, Venezuela is ready for US investment, like with Chevron." The prisoner releases in the final days of December, the conciliatory interviews, the studied silence on CIA drone strikes against Venezuelan territory: these were not the actions of a government preparing to resist. They were the actions of a government negotiating terms.

And then: the military response that wasn't. No generalized counter-offensive from the FANB. No visible mobilization of anything approaching the "4.5 million militiamen" Maduro once promised. Padrino López has now appeared to denounce the raid and announced a "massive deployment" of land, air, naval and missile forces. But the rhetoric remains largely declarative. It has not translated into sustained combat with American units, which completed their operation and withdrew before any serious engagement materialized. The upper echelons are publicly projecting unity and resistance rather than open fracture; they are saying the right things. Yet their choice not to escalate into large-scale confrontation, their failure to contest the extraction as it happened, keeps alive the possibility of prior understandings or internal arrangements that remain invisible to public view. Generals who intended to fight would have fought. These generals announced they would fight after the Americans had already left.

Top US advisors had warned that a ground invasion would require 100,000 troops and risk a regional quagmire. They remembered Iraq. They remembered the counterinsurgency nightmares, the IEDs, the decade of bleeding. A negotiated "kidnapping," in which Maduro is permitted exile in Cuba or Turkey or Moscow in exchange for the generals standing down, presents no such difficulties. The spectacle of extraction, the 2am bombs, the dramatic announcement from Mar-a-Lago: all of this can be true while the underlying transaction remains a surrender, not a capture.

If this theory is correct, and the circumstantial evidence is damning, then the final verdict on Madurismo is far worse than the campists imagine. This was not a revolutionary government brought down by imperial aggression. This was a bureaucratic caste that traded national sovereignty for personal amnesty, that sold the Bolivarian project for exile privileges, that negotiated in secret while Venezuelan workers earned less than a dollar per month. The anti-imperialism was a facade. The socialism was branding. When the moment came, the boliburguesía discovered that their real interests aligned not with the working class they claimed to represent, but with the oligarchs and compradors on the other side of the table.

The Revolutionary Left Responds

The independent Venezuelan left is caught in a deadly spiral between imperialist aggression and a repressive bureaucracy they have long opposed. Their position is clear, consistent, and vindicated by events.

The PCV under Óscar Figuera has denounced the US strikes as "naked imperialist aggression." But they refuse, absolutely, to form a "patriotic front" with the Maduro apparatus. Why? Because they have been warning for years that Maduro's anti-imperialism was performative, a rhetorical shield behind which the bureaucracy pursued accommodation with capital. The repression of workers, the judicial intervention that handed the PCV's legal registration to regime loyalists, the accusations that communists were "agents of imperialism": all of this, the PCV argued, was clearing the path for precisely this moment by destroying the only force capable of genuinely defending Venezuela. An organized, autonomous working class.

The invasion vindicates their analysis. Madurismo could not resist because it had already demobilized the forces that might have resisted. The participatory structures, the communal councils, the factory committees: these were hollowed out or converted into instruments of bureaucratic control. The "workplace militias" were designed for social discipline, not national defense. When the Americans came, there was nothing left to fight with except a demoralized conscript army whose commanders were busy negotiating their own futures.

The Fourth International sections and International Viewpoint maintain this position: neither Maduro nor Trump, neither the bureaucracy nor the compradors. They criticize the campist organizations who demanded unconditional solidarity with Caracas while ignoring that Maduro's government had become, in their words, a "closed regime" indistinguishable from the authoritarianisms the left once opposed. The task now, they argue, is self-organization: emergency committees in neighborhoods and factories to prevent both the incoming Machado government from imposing shock therapy and the remnants of Madurismo from fragmenting into localized warlords.

This is the position Red Mole endorses. The false choice between imperial aggression and bureaucratic betrayal was always a trap. The Venezuelan working class deserves solidarity against both.

The Machado Dispensation

The nature of what comes next requires no speculation. María Corina Machado has stated her program with admirable clarity: it is that of the US government.

She supported the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Florida Republicans, including Marco Rubio, the architect of Operation Southern Spear. She dedicated her award to Trump, calling him a "champion of freedom" who "absolutely" deserves a Nobel of his own. She endorsed the boat strikes that killed over 112 people, saying "these deaths are the responsibility of Nicolás Maduro." When asked if she was calling for US military intervention, she did not deny it.

Her "Order and Liberty" platform is Thatcherism for the tropics: radical privatization, dismantling of the remaining Misiones, and what socialists rightly warn will be a "revenge" campaign against anyone associated with Chavismo. Not just the bureaucrats who negotiated their surrenders. The critical left as well. The union organizers. The community activists. Anyone who participated in the structures that once made the Bolivarian project a mass movement, regardless of their subsequent opposition to Maduro.

The campists who demanded we choose between Washington and Miraflores have delivered the Venezuelan working class to precisely this outcome. Their refusal to acknowledge the bureaucratic degeneration, their attacks on the PCV and APR as "splitters" and "useful idiots," their insistence that criticism of Maduro meant collaboration with imperialism: all of this contributed to the isolation of the authentic left, the forces that might have built an alternative. Whether Machado arrives with her Nobel Prize and her privatisation program, or if the bureaucracy implements it instead, the campists have no answer except to blame the people who warned them.

The Grenada Parallel: What Bishop's Murder Teaches Us

The date matters: January 3. Thirty-five years since Noriega's extraction from Panama. Forty-two years since Reagan invaded Grenada. The symmetry is deliberate, a message to Havana, to Managua, to any government in Latin America that imagines sovereignty is possible.

But the Grenada parallel illuminates more than imperial continuity. It shows us what happens when revolutionary movements destroy themselves from within, handing their enemies the pretext they were already seeking.

Maurice Bishop died because the New Jewel Movement represented something Washington could never tolerate: a successful socialist experiment in its Caribbean backyard, conducted in English by Black revolutionaries who could communicate directly to thirty million Black Americans. The internal crisis, the Coard faction's catastrophic ultraleftism, the execution at Fort Rupert, provided the pretext. But the invasion was coming regardless. Reagan had been preparing it since 1981.

The British left responded with characteristic fragmentation. The International Marxist Group, the British section of the Fourth International, characterized the NJM as a "workers' and farmers' government" and focused on "anti-imperialist united fronts," arguing that the "crimes of Coard" did not justify the "greater crime of the US invasion." The Socialist Workers Party, more skeptical of Bishop's "socialism from above" given their state-capitalist theoretical framework, nonetheless took to the streets of London under the slogan "Neither Coard nor Reagan." Both recognized that whatever Bishop's limitations, whatever the tragedy of the internal split, the American invasion was the greater enemy.

Castro's position was more complex and more bitter. He had a genuine personal and political friendship with Bishop, viewing him as the ideal Caribbean revolutionary: charismatic, popular, pragmatic. When Coard's Revolutionary Military Council placed Bishop under house arrest, Castro was furious. He sent messages calling the internal conflict "lamentable" and refused to intervene militarily to help Coard's faction. When the US invaded, Castro found himself in an impossible position. He ordered the Cuban construction workers building the Point Salines airport to defend themselves if attacked, but he refused to send reinforcements. In the aftermath, Castro essentially blamed Coard for "handing the island to the Americans on a silver platter." He famously stated that Coard and his clique had "murdered the revolution."

The aftermath was a study in political exhaustion. In 1984, survivors of the Bishop wing formed the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement to keep the revolution's social programs alive through the electoral process. They won 5% of the vote and zero seats. By 1990, their support had dropped to 2%. Today the MBPM is defunct. The failure to reconstitute the left in Grenada suggests that US "regime change" is most effective when it follows an internal implosion. The trauma of seeing revolutionaries kill their own leader did more to discredit socialism in the Caribbean than the US Marines ever could.

This is the lesson Venezuela now faces. Madurismo did not murder its leader, but it murdered the revolution's content while preserving its rhetoric. The participatory democracy became bureaucratic control. The workers' councils became instruments of discipline. The anti-imperialism became a negotiating position. When the Americans came, there was nothing left to defend except the privileges of a caste that was already negotiating its own extraction.

The Strategic Arc: Venezuela as Preamble to Iran

The attack on Venezuela is not an isolated event. Fourth International strategists interpret it as a strategic preamble to war with Iran.

Consider the logic. After removing Maduro, the US can destroy the primary logistical hub for Iranian and Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere. The Hezbollah connections, the Iranian commercial ties, the Russian military advisors: all of this can be swept away in a single operation. Securing Venezuelan oil provides an energy cushion against the global market shocks that would follow strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The "extraction" mirrors operations conducted by Israel in Lebanon and elsewhere, suggesting a unified US-Israeli tactical playbook being tested in the Caribbean before deployment in the Middle East.

The CPI(M) is correct: this is the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, formally announced in the National Security Strategy 2025. US officials have stated plainly that the objective is to "get Russia, China, and Iran out of the Western Hemisphere." No Latin American nation may pursue an independent foreign policy. No government in the hemisphere may maintain relations with Beijing, Moscow, or Tehran without Washington's permission. The message to Havana, to Managua, to any state that imagines sovereignty is possible: you are next.

This broader context does not excuse Madurismo. It indicts it further. A revolutionary government facing this threat would have built the mass organizations, the popular militias, the international solidarity networks capable of making invasion costly. Maduro built a Bonapartist apparatus that enriched a boliburguesía (the wealthly elite dependent on state corruption) while crushing the autonomous left. When the strategic moment arrived, he had nothing to offer except negotiated surrender.

What Is To Be Done

Inside Venezuela

The priority is physical defense. Activists, union leaders, community organizers face danger from both the collapsing regime and the arriving "liberators." The Machado government will not distinguish between critical leftists and Maduro loyalists. Everyone who participated in Chavismo, however they may have opposed its degeneration, is a target.

The PCV and APR call for "Sovereignty Committees" demanding immediate publication of all secret deals between Maduro, the military, and the Americans. This is correct. The Venezuelan people have a right to know exactly how they were sold. The terms of the surrender, the exile arrangements, the guarantees given to the generals: all of this must be exposed.

Emergency committees must form in neighborhoods and factories. Their tasks: prevent the incoming government from imposing shock therapy, prevent the remnants of Madurismo from fragmenting into localized warlords, and protect the physical safety of activists who will be targeted by both sides. The autonomous working class, which Madurismo spent a decade demobilizing, must reconstitute itself now or face extermination.

Outside Venezuela

The slogan is "Hands Off Venezuela: No to the Corporate Takeover." This must be coupled with absolute refusal to apologize for Maduro's authoritarianism. The campist error, which insisted that anti-imperialism required uncritical solidarity with any government Washington opposed, produced the catastrophe it claimed to prevent. We will not repeat it.

Solidarity flows to the PCV, to the APR, to the authentic revolutionary left that maintained its independence from both Miraflores and Washington. They face persecution from every direction now. They are the only force capable of rebuilding a movement that serves Venezuelan workers rather than Chevron shareholders or boliburgués exiles.

Organizations outside Venezuela must provide material support: legal defense funds, emergency relocation assistance, platforms for the authentic left to speak. The campist organizations that spent years attacking the PCV as "splitters" must now reckon with the consequences of their line. International solidarity means supporting the forces that can actually rebuild a revolutionary movement, not mourning bureaucracies that betrayed one.

The Hour Is Late

The bombs over Caracas announce a new phase of American imperial assertion: the formal closure of the post-Cold War period in which Washington pretended to respect sovereignty and international law. The "rules-based order" was always a fiction, but now even the fiction has been abandoned. What remains is the naked exercise of power, justified by whatever pretext comes to hand: narcoterrorism today, weapons of mass destruction tomorrow.

The Grenada comparison is instructive but incomplete. Bishop was a revolutionary whose movement was destroyed from within by ultraleft adventurism. Maduro was a bureaucrat whose movement was destroyed from within by corruption and class betrayal. The American invasion was the same in both cases: an imperial power seizing the moment of internal weakness to reimpose colonial control. But the Venezuelan left begins from a different position than the Grenadian left did in 1984. The PCV and APR have already articulated the critique; they have already maintained their independence; they have already refused the false choice between Miraflores and Washington. Whether they can survive the persecution that now awaits them, and rebuild a movement from the ruins, depends on international solidarity that refuses both campist apologetics and liberal interventionism.

What comes next, in Venezuela and beyond, depends on whether the international left can build the movements capable of resisting, not the movements capable of apologizing for bureaucracies that betray. The hour is late. The work begins now.

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Postscript: The Call Was Coming from Inside the Palace

Updated following Trump’s Mar-a-Lago press conference, 3 January 2026

So now we know.

Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s Vice President, has been sworn in as president. She has already spoken with Marco Rubio. She has agreed to “work with the US.” Trump’s words: “We’ll do what you need. She had no choice.”

María Corina Machado, who dedicated her Nobel Prize to Trump, who endorsed the boat strikes, who called him a “champion of freedom”? Discarded. “She does not have the support in Venezuela,” Trump said, dismissive, already bored. The useful idiot discovered she was the idiot, not the user.

American military presence will be limited to “sorting out Venezuela’s oil industry.” Not democracy. Not liberation. Oil.

This was not regime change. This was regime adjustment. Madurismo continues, minus Maduro, now operating openly as a client state. The generals keep their positions. The bureaucrats keep their ministries. Rodríguez keeps the presidency. The boliburguesía keep their fortunes. Washington gets the oil and the strategic position. Everyone who mattered to the deal got what they wanted.

Everyone except Venezuelan workers, who get the same corrupt elite, now without even the pretence of independence.

The campists spent years demanding we defend Maduro against imperial aggression. They attacked the PCV as splitters. They called Venezuelan communists “agents of imperialism” for noting that Madurismo had abandoned the working class. They insisted that criticism of Caracas meant collaboration with Washington.

They were defending people already on the phone with Rubio.

The authentic Venezuelan left warned us. Figuera warned us. The APR warned us. They said Maduro’s anti-imperialism was a facade, a negotiating position, a brand. They were expelled from the ruling coalition, had their party registration stolen, were called traitors. They were right about everything.

Now they face persecution from both sides: from the Madurista apparatus that betrayed them and will blame them for its humiliation, and from whatever arrangement emerges from Rodríguez’s conversations with Washington. International solidarity must flow to them. Not to the bureaucrats who sold out. Not to the opposition that’s just been discarded. To the workers’ organisations that maintained their independence and told the truth.

The lesson is not complicated. Anti-imperialism that serves a corrupt elite is not anti-imperialism. It is a negotiating tactic. When the price is right, they will sell. They always sell. The only defence against empire is an organized working class that cannot be sold because it is not for sale.

Maduro is in American custody. Rodríguez is on the phone with Rubio. Machado is learning what her Nobel Prize is worth. And somewhere in Caracas, the comrades of the PCV are preparing for the next phase of a struggle they never abandoned.

The hour is late. The work continues.