After the massive electoral victory on December 3, Chavez has put a big emphasis on the need to turn towards socialism. As part of this he is proposing a new party, built from the bottom up, to bypass the bureaucracy.

One thousand people marched yesterday through the main streets of Caracas, in what was the largest demonstration in favour of the expropriation of an occupied factory that has ever taken place in Venezuela. This was truly an historic march. It was the real and genuine spirit of the working class taking over the streets of Caracas and pointing the way the revolution must advance.

An inspiring 13 minute film about the Bolivarian revolution and the activities of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign.

The workers of Sanitarios Maracay took to the streets in support of the 10 million votes for Chavez campaign and to call for the nationalisation of the company under workers' control.

After occupying Sanitarios Maracay, the workers have created new organisational forms for the running of the factory. The Assembly of workers is the highest decision making body, and has elected a 21-member Factory Committee, who are subject to the right of recall at any time by the Assembly, to organise production at the plant. The workers have also held meetings with workers from occupied factories in Brazil and Venezuela in order to learn from the experiences of other workers in the occupied factory movement.

The Venezuelan edition of Reason in Revolt has just come out. Here we publish the Introduction where emphasis is placed on the need for Marxist theory, the catalyst that can speed up and complete the Venezuelan Revolution.

The central thesis of this book from beginning to end is the following: that the Bolivarian Revolution can only succeed if it goes beyond the boundaries of capitalist private property, expropriating the oligarchy and transforming itself into a socialist revolution. The Revolution has begun, but it is not finished.The old state apparatus is still largely intact and a number of key economic levers (including the banks and the land) remain in the hands of the Venezuelan oligarchy.

The campaign for Venezuela's presidential election on December 3rd is already well under way. But this is far from a normal election. On December 3rd what is really at stake is the future of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Recent events in Venezuela prove that the revolution is far from over. Venezuelan society is extremely unstable, and all kinds of tensions between the classes manifest themselves in peculiar ways. Inside the Bolivarian movement, different tendencies are beginning to crystallize, revealing that not everyone is fighting for the same aims and ideas.

The expropriation of two golf courses in Venezuela was met with enthusiasm by wide layers of the Bolivarian movement and a hysterical campaign on the part of the bourgeois. In order for the revolution to move forward these expropriations must continue and must be extended.

On Monday, August 28, a public screening of a new documentary about workers' control in Venezuela was held at the Teressa Carreño in central Caracas, with the support of the Ministry of Culture. More than 250 people turned up to see "5 Factories - Workers' Control in Venezuela", a film produced by two Italian filmmakers, Dario Azellini and Oliver Ressler.

The December presidential elections are an important turning point in the development of the Venezuelan Revolution. They reflect the struggle between the Venezuelan workers and peasants and the oligarchy and imperialism. Our attitude towards these elections is therefore a key question.

Chavez is about to visit Iran. We understand the reasons for reaching trade deals with a regime like the Iranian. The US is attempting to isolate Venezuela, but we believe it is one thing to reach such deals and it is another to present the Iranian regime as if it were somehow “revolutionary”. To do such a thing would sow confusion among the Iranian workers, the only ones who have a genuine interest in defending the Bolivarian Revolution.

The correlation of forces continues to be enormously favourable to the Venezuelan revolution, but it is necessary to take advantage of this in order to finish the job and take the revolution to the end. As long as the revolution does not break totally and absolutely with the private ownership of the means of production it will be in danger and will not be irreversible.

On April 4, workers from occupied factories and factories under cogestión (workers' control) marched in Caracas from the National Assembly to the Miraflores presidential palace. The march had been organised by the recently created Revolutionary Front of Workers of Factories Occupied and under Workers' Control and included delegations from several occupied factories.