VENEZUELA’S communists have backed President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election in April, vowing to “support the revolutionary process even with our lives.”

Communist Party (PCV) general secretary Oscar Figuera said the country needed “unity before the onslaught of North American imperialism against our nation.”

The “only way out of the capitalist crisis is socialism,” he stressed, while warning that this was “not the same as saying we are in socialism.”

Mr Figuera said the party had urged Mr Maduro to nationalise the entire financial sector, declaring: “Not a dollar more to the national bourgeoisie!”

In talks with the ruling United Socialist Party the PCV had also demanded an end to “rentier” economics where the government has relied on revenues raised by oil exports to fund social programmes rather than challenging capitalist wealth directly, “limiting itself to managing the crisis without affecting the domination of capital.”

The PCV central committee declared last month that the model of “capitalist dependency and rentier accumulation” in Venezuela was “exhausted” and criticised reform projects that “lack the class content to go beyond social assistance programmes.”

The Bolivarian revolution needs to be “proletarianised,” it advised, recommending that Caracas “consider removing the roots of the capitalist system.”

Mr Maduro met members of the PCV politburo yesterday and “received criticism” from them, especially on the “low purchasing power of Venezuelans.”

“I appreciate the criticism, I am committed to deepen the mechanisms of consultation,” he said.

“We have to deepen employment. We have to deepen the system of protection of homes.”