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.

Latin America is a huge area of the world, rich in human and material resources and yet a large part of its peoples live in poverty. Most of the countries that make it up speak a common language and have a common history. Simon Bolivar raised the idea of uniting all these countries to fight the imperialists. In today’s context this idea translates into the Socialist United States of Latin America – a socialist federation.

We are publishing the draft perspectives document of the Venezuelan Marxists. For now it is only available in Spanish, but shortly we plan to have it up in English. The document provides a detailed analysis of the process in Venezuela and highlights the fact that a growing number of activists feel that the revolution must be completed now. The Opposition is weak and divided and time must not be lost. But within the Bolivarian movement there are leaders and bureaucrats who are trying to hold the masses back.

On Wednesday January 25, while the attention of most people was on the events of the World Social Forum in Caracas, an important meeting took place in the industrialized Guayana-region. The meeting, which was held in the meeting hall of Venalum, attracted more than 200 people, mainly workers and trade union activists from the basic industries in Guayana.

ALCASA is an aluminium plant in Ciudad Bolivar in Venezuela. It is being run under cogestion, formally speaking workers’ participation. But when you take a closer look what we see is that in practice the workforce is moving more and more towards genuine workers’ control. Managers are elected and do not get higher wages than those they had before becoming managers, and so on. It confirms that the Venezuelan workers are in the vanguard of the world revolution.

Prior to the Venezuelan elections there were clear indications that elements within the oligarchy were planning a coup or even possible assassination of Chavez. The opposition parties boycotted the elections as part of this plan to destabilise the country. They failed miserably. The Bolivarian parties have now total control of the National Assembly. They could mobilise the masses while at the same setting in motion all the legal procedures to abolish capitalism once and for all. But will they do this? To vacillate now, to attempt a compromise, would mean giving the opposition a dangerous advantage.

There are many bourgeois historians who believe that history is made by “Great Men and Women”, kings and queens, statesmen and politicians. It is this unscientific approach that Marxism is opposed to. However, Marxists do not deny the role of individuals in history. History is made by people. But we need to uncover the dialectical relationship between the individual (the subjective) and the great forces (objective) that govern the movement of society and see this role in its historical context.

“This is an historical gathering. For the first time workers from occupied factories from across the continent are meeting together” (Serge Goulart, United Workers’ Council of Brazilian group of occupied factories)

“We have shown how the workers can run the companies, and this means we can run society as well” (Ricardo Moreira, PIT-CNT, Uruguay)

Workers' representatives and trade union activists from around the country met in Caracas on October 21-22, in the National Gathering of Workers towards the Recovery of Companies. The main aim of this meeting, called by Venezuela’s National Workers’ Union (UNT), was to bring together workers involved in experiences of factory occupations and different forms of workers’ management.

This book, originally published in May 2005, is a collection of articles written by Alan Woods and covers the momentous events of the Bolivarian revolution from the April 2002 coup which was defeated by the masses, up until 2005 when president Chavez declared that the aims of the Venezuelan revolution could only be achieved by abolishing capitalism. More than a decade has passed since the publication of the book and the warnings contained within it have come true: the failure to move towards socialism is at the bottom of the crisis facing the Bolivarian revolution today.

In his weekly Alo Presidente TV programme, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez announced that some 136 closed factories are being surveyed with the aim of expropriating them. Within the workers’ movement this has been enthusiastically received. The main discussion now is what is meant by socialism, how to apply “co-management” and what the role of the workers is in the revolutionary process and in the economy.