Scholars explain that modern political parties appeared in the parliamentary universe of England, between the late eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century.
Unlike factions of landowners, guild coalitions, power groups, alliances between the powerful, unions of regional clans, pacts between aristocrats from different areas and other previous forms of association to influence power or gain control of it, modern political parties are associated with processes of enormous consequences for society: transition from the Absolutist State to the Rule of Law, expansion of the right to vote, development of the phenomenon we know as public opinion, massification of the participation of citizens in common affairs, appearance and growth of the press, and many others.
The modernization of societies has had in the action of political parties one of its fundamental driving forces.
The political party, regardless of the way in which it is formed and born, exists to rival another or other parties. It exists to defend and promote ideas and interests that conflict with different or contrary ideas and interests.
Thus, the legitimacy of a political party depends on the existence of more than one party. Legitimacy is inseparable from competition in good standing.
When the party takes advantage of its link with power to establish itself as a hegemonic organization; when it is confused with the State; when it has different resources and tools and disproportionate strength with respect to its rivals, then the party loses its legitimacy and becomes an anti-democratic network, in a structure that is confused with the State, which makes its own the powers and faculties that do not belong to it: it leaves behind the primary use of politics to exercise over society and its forms of representation, mechanisms of coercion, blackmail, crushing by force.
Thus, when the political party advances towards the destruction of its peers to establish itself as a single party; when it is no longer interested in persuading the citizen or winning over the electorate; When its only interest is reduced to the undisguised and open exercise of submission, then the hegemonic organization acquires a new condition: it is transformed into a machine for destruction.
It is transformed into a party-regime. In a nucleus that brings together mafias. This is the case of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
If the reader visits the website of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and clicks on the tab that says Gallery, two columns of photographs will appear.
In the second photograph of the column located on the right, Cabello and El Aissami, one next to the other, the other next to one, surrounded by a mass of militants during an act held in the Maestranza César Girón bullring, in Maracay (the photograph has no legend, therefore, there is no information about the date on which it was made), With their arms raised, hands clasped, they celebrate with smiles that cross their faces.
What do they celebrate? Why do they look so joyful, so happy to portray themselves side by side?
This photograph, like many others available in newspaper libraries, archives and on the web, has a great symbolic load: it is revealing of one of the essences of the PSUV: that of a network of mafias ─not a modern political party─, which coexist and establish alliances for the total domination of society and the unlimited exploitation of its productive and natural goods and resources.
The party-regime is, in reality, a structure dedicated to the plundering and subjugation of people and institutions.
This alliance of mafias ─I have repeated it in several of these Sunday articles─, long ago broke with the current exercise of politics, to merge with the State: it controls its judicial, police, military and paramilitary mechanisms; it has almost unlimited logistical and financial resources; manages social programs, perks, scholarships, bonuses, subsidies and more, all tools with which to extort and impose political loyalties on families; it is endowed with a set of organizational structures (the CLAP units, the communal councils, the Bolívar-Chávez Units ─UBCH─, the structure of the Francisco de Miranda Front, the missions and large missions, the PSUV units that disaggregate up to the parish, the collectives and other paramilitary bands, and more), all possible, motorized, financed and protected with the money of the Venezuelan State, that is, with the resources that are owned by the citizens.
This alliance of mafias has the support of the military structure of the Venezuelan State (in fact, there are high uniformed officials who, without any scruple, fulfill partisan functions, to the extent that they attend Cabello's television program to publicly expose their unconditionality to the party-regime); it has under its control the body that should act as an electoral arbiter, which means that Venezuela is a country without an independent electoral power; It has police forces, a prison system controlled by a high command of inmates, natural resources that are devoured under methods that destroy the environment, military and business alliances with narco-guerrilla groups, in areas of the south of the country.
The party-regime, the party-mafia is the de facto owner of the oil revenue, owner of tolls, roads and customs, looter and destroyer of the hundreds of companies that were stolen from their rightful owners and then led to their total ruin.
PSUV: not a political party. An implacable, powerful, criminal and unpunished regime, against which the democratic opposition intends to compete electorally in 2024. The question is whether the mafia party will accept its defeat or impose its continuity, as before, by force.