Whither Venezuela?

Excerpt:

....instead of mobilizing working people to take power out of the hands of the capitalist class and organizing workers to control conditions on the job — as Cuban revolutionaries did — Chávez put forward a course of trying to manage the capitalist market in favor of the working classes. Maduro has continued that course.

Cubans aid social programs

Chávez and Maduro used the nation’s oil profits — Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world — to subsidize housing, food, health care and social programs. Many of the social programs have been carried out with the help of revolutionary Cuba, which has tens of thousands of health-care workers, teachers and other volunteers who go to some of the most impoverished and least accessible areas of the country.

The Venezuelan government in return has provided cheap oil to Cuba.

The world capitalist economic crisis has had a devastating affect on Venezuela. A precipitous drop in the price of oil — which accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings — was countered by printing money. Policies aimed at managing the crisis, such as price controls and a special exchange rate for dollars for companies that import and export, fueled inflation and shortages of goods, as many capitalists found it more profitable to speculate on the exchange rates instead of manufacturing.

Full article:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8021/802150.html