The following greeting was sent as a video message by our party chair to the inaugural meeting of the Women’s Anti-imperialist Platform, which was held in Caracas on 21 October 2025.
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I’m very happy to greet today the founding conference of the Women’s Anti-imperialist Platform in Caracas. This is a very significant development for our movement and a project that is very close to my heart.
All over the world today, as the global economic crisis becomes ever worse, the burdens on working people are becoming ever more intolerable. And on working women in particular, since we know that in general it is women who bear the extra burden of trying to make ends meet, trying to feed their families, trying to bring up their children and their grandchildren, trying to take care of the elderly, the sick and the disabled, as well as having to often work two or three jobs to help the family to survive through times which are getting tougher and tougher.
And of course, these problems are being compounded by the spread of war across the globe, which is targeting ever more countries and communities.
Ever more families being broken up, suffering under massacre or having to flee as refugees. And this is only going to get worse as the crisis develops and the drive into this third world war deepens and spreads its flames across more of the world.
Because of the burdens women face, they very often feel that they simply don’t have time for politics. They’re too busy just trying to make ends meet, trying to keep the family together, trying to put food on the table.
What our movement needs to help women understand is that in fact it’s the very difficulties they face that mean they must make time for politics. That in fact it is our politics – the politics of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism – that are going to liberate them from the double and triple burdens that they face today; that are going to offer them and their children the hope of a decent, peaceful, cultured existence in the future.
History shows us that no revolution has ever been successful without the participation of a mass of working-class women. It also shows us that when a movement is successful in mobilising masses of working-class women, nothing can stop it.
We remember that the February Revolution in Russia was sparked by a march of working-class women who were demanding “Land, peace and bread”. The economic and the war crises had driven them onto the streets. And it was their mass participation that triggered and lit the flame of the February Revolution, which led on then to the October Revolution.
And it was women’s participation that made sure the October Revolution was successful and that socialism was successfully built in the USSR.
We’ve seen this time and again in other revolutions: in China, in the DPRK, in Vietnam, in Burkina Faso, in many places. Of course also in Cuba and very much in Venezuela. I have seen myself how the grassroots of the Venezuelan mass movement for socialism is held up and held together by working-class women in working-class communes.
Venezuela is a wonderful example to us of the power of mobilised working-class women and the importance, the significance they hold for the success of our movement in Venezuela. I am quite sure it’s the strength of the communes and of the working-class women who hold those communes together, who have built them and who hold them firm at the roots; that it’s the strength of the communal movement which is enabling Venezuela to stand firm against relentless aggression, attacks, sabotage and war threats from the imperialists. Against economic starvation attempts.
Venezuela has weathered an incredible storm over the last years. And the imperialists are not giving up and going away. Quite the reverse.
Because of their own crisis and their own desperation, they are doubling down and coming harder for Venezuela. They really want to destroy the good example Venezuela is setting to the rest of Latin America. They want to take back control of Venezuela’s oil, which they desperately need – especially as they’re losing their grip in the middle east.
Venezuela is standing firm precisely because its government rests on a network of working-class communities, and those working-class communes rest on the strength, the activism, the militance and the commitment of working-class women.
So we see the importance and the significance for our movement’s success in mobilising women into our ranks. And we must help women to see that it’s our politics that offers them and their families a truly bright future.
So comrades I wish your meeting success. I wish success to our movement in this time of great and increasing struggle. And I hope to see you all in person soon.
