Meeting in Caracas Feb. 26, the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) and the governing United Socialist Party (PSUV) reached a historic agreement after days of negotiation. As a result of the “PSUV-PCV Unitary Accord,” the first of its kind in the country’s revolutionary struggle, the two parties agree to work together to solve the challenges facing Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution. The PCV also agreed to endorse Nicolás Maduro for president in the upcoming April 22 election. The Unitary Accord was presented at the PCV’s Fourteenth National Conference, during which President Maduro and several top PSUV members and government ministers addressed the delegates and signed the Accord. The entire proceedings were broadcasted live by Venezuelan TV. Below is the PSUV-PCV Unitary Accord in its entirety, translated by Fight Back! staff. PSUV-PCV Unitary Accord

1. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) — as inheritors of Simón Bolívar’s legacy and the Venezuelan people’s struggles in their desire for independence, sovereign development and Latin American integration — submit the present Unitary Programmatic Accord Framework with a common commitment to apply it in all manners, understanding that the growing immoral, illegal and criminal interventionist aggression of U.S. imperialism and its European allies against the Venezuelan Bolivarian process puts at risk the national liberation process initiated by the people’s victory and led by comandante President Hugo Chávez in the 1998 presidential elections; and endangers our national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

2. The PSUV and the PCV denounce before the world that imperialism — by means of the U.S. government and with the complicity of Latin American governments and the Venezuelan far right — wants to create a false expedient in multilateral organisms against our country to justify international intervention, with the real possibility of the right-wing governments of Colombia, Brazil and Guyana causing a provocation on our borders.

3. The PCV and the PSUV point out that the crisis of Venezuelan rentier-dependent capitalism has grave consequences on the quality of life of our people, especially in their purchasing power and ability to access goods and services. This situation has been aggravated by the actions of imperialism and its national agents, and exacerbated by public and private corruption, bureaucratism and the outflow of foreign currency, in the context of severe reduction of oil exports, against which the national government must maintain and deepen the front line struggle such as that occurring in the PDVSA [the government owned oil and gas company] and other state-owned entities.*

4. The PSUV and the PCV agree that the exit from the current capitalist crisis must not be in the interests of the bourgeoisie and the transnationals, but rather in the interests of the people, and in search of a new post-rentier productive model, of sovereign development, and of spreading protagonist participation for workers, campesinos, the communes and the people. This conforms to a great anti-imperialist front and will advance the construction of an organic instance of collective leadership of political, social, patriotic and revolutionary organizations for the analysis, construction and coordination of political actions and the running of the government.

5. The magnitude and gravity of the current situation, and the deepening class struggle on the national and international levels, merits immediate action in the political, social and economic realms, among which urgent methods must be prioritized to attend to popular needs in food and health, and in order to consolidate the victories of the patriotic forces in the upcoming presidential elections.

The Rights of the Working Class and Working People

6. The PSUV and the PCV recognizes the importance of strengthening class struggle unionism and the diverse expressions of the revolutionary workers movement, such as the productive workers’ movements, the socialist workers’ councils, approving the Special Law established by the LOTTT** and all other revolutionary worker organizational forms, respecting their autonomy, and developing effective channels so that public and private sector workers can play the leading role in developing the social process of work.

7. Taking account of the deepening capitalist crisis which impacts broad sectors of the working class, it is important to strengthen and reinforce labor rights, employment protection and broaden new employment policies.

8. The PSUV and the PCV will work in unison according to the reach of each organization, from the government and socio-political spaces, to identify and channel the restitution of workers’ rights that are infringed upon in already-occurring cases or that present themselves in public and private entities.

9. To review denunciations made by revolutionary organizations against the actions of public officials and immediately apply the necessary correctives.

10. To decisively advance the proper productive chain of nationalized companies, which must be revitalized to reverse the processes of dismantlement and deterioration that could lead to the harmful paralysis of national productive development, as well as protecting and institutionally supporting campesino collectives that have reactivated state-owned funds.

11. The PSUV and the PCV will evaluate the experiences of workers’ control, such as the Socialist Guayana Plan, in order to establish a new model of state-owned company leadership, under worker and popular control for the processes of production, administration and distribution of goods and services, based in collective leadership, to definitively banish the scourge of corruption, inefficiency and anti-democratic methods within their management.

12. To promote and implement decisive actions on the part of the National Supervision in Defense of Socio-Economic Rights (SUNDDE) and the Supervision of Institutions of the Banking Sector (SUDEBAN), in unison with the popular organizations, with the goal of protecting the millions of users of banking services, particularly salaried employees, pensioners and small business owners.

13. We consider it pertinent and urgent to adopt and deepen measures aimed at dismantling the power of private monopolies, and define and carry out policies to achieve sovereign and productive development, punishing the corrupt, speculators and mafia types; to promote the deepening and carrying out of policies for national, sovereign and productive development.

14. To recognize formal work with rights as an activity that provides dignity for human beings, as well as to strengthen wages and restore them as the principle and majority component of the earnings of workers.

Methods to Analyze with Great Profundity

15. The PSUV and the PCV, in bilateral and periodic meetings, will analyze the strategic proposals currently being outlined by the PCV to assist in the good development of government plans and policies in order to benefit the people and achieve national liberation, among them:

15.1 Themes around the banking and financial system, imports, public financing, and the tax system.

Strengthening of political organizational action

16. The PSUV and the PCV will identify areas of common action that must be strengthened politically and organizationally.

16.1 The PCV and the PSUV will maintain bilateral meetings, with a timetable of periodicity of at least one time, between representatives of both national leadership bodies.

16.2 The PSUV and the PCV will follow the work of regional and municipal administrations so that they develop effective policies, with attention to the felt needs of the population.

16.3 In the international area, based in spheres of action and attention to each organization, the parties will fortify their relations with bodies that have demonstrated solidarity with Venezuela and the revolutionary process.

16.4 In the productive area, support for manufacturing and agricultural proposals and projects will be guaranteed, with special emphasis on the initiatives of the campesino movement and the communes.

16.5 The PSUV and the PCV commit themselves to fortify the trade union movement, facilitating cooperation between revolutionary and class struggle currents and state entities for the solution to problems and labor conflicts, as well as respect for all labor rights.

16.6 The parties will support related projects with methods of audio-visual communication to be initiated by both organizations and by the popular and workers movements, and collaborate in combat against the media war and psychological operations.

16.7 The political organizations will support further relationship between the youth organizations — the Youth of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the Communist Youth of Venezuela — along with a drive for student, cultural, sports and community proposals, for deepening the rights of the youth.

16.8 With the objective of advancing in the development of the PSUV-PCV alliance and the popular revolutionary movement, we will work to guarantee a unitary formula of an electoral character that provides the effective presence and strength of our organizations in the legislative elections on municipal, statewide and national levels.

Presidential Elections

17. The Communist Party of Venezuela, based in the present accord and on the diverse points of unity with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela with regards to national and international policies, support the candidacy of compatriot Nicolás Maduro Moros at the head of a broad coalition of political and social forces — patriotic, popular and revolutionary — as the seed of collective leadership of the process, which represents the popular aspirations of anti-imperialist struggles, Latin American unity, sovereign development, and the interests of the Venezuelan people. We will work jointly without reducing the autonomy of each organization to achieve a decisive victory on April 22, 2018.

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\* Since August, the country’s attorney general has led a sweeping anti-corruption campaign in PDVSA that has led to dozens of arrests, including of former PDVSA presidents and oil ministers.

\*\* The Organic Law of Workers and Work (LOTTT) is the comprehensive labor law in Venezuela that covers union rights, allows for workers to run the means of production, and severely restricts the rights of employers to harass workers.

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