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Steve Ellner
In 2020, the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) withdrew support for President Nicolás Maduro even though Washington had recently intensified the “war on Venezuela,” which included sanctions and military threats. The PCV's decision was in response to Maduro's business-friendly “defensive strategy” in the face of the imperialist aggression, which was more severe than that directed against other progressive Latin American governments, particularly after 2015. Maduro appeared to view the PCV and other critics on the left through the same lenses that he did critics on the right and, in the process, what Mao called “contradictions among the people” ended up becoming “antagonistic contradictions.” There are tools, albeit imprecise ones, to determine whether the type of political retreat engineered by Maduro accorded with existing objective-subjective conditions in Venezuela. Unfavorable objective and subjective conditions also influenced Marx and Lenin to advocate defensive or “non-offensive” strategies at different times in their lifetimes, vehemently rejected by other leftist leaders.
