Venezuela's oil workers had every reason to celebrate May Day as the Venezuelan government took further steps towards the nationalisation of the oil industry.
Multinational oil companies including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and BP were all forced to give a 60 percent shareholding of their ventures in the Orinoco basin to PDVSA, Venezuela's state-owned oil company. The new regulations for the oil industry came into force on 1 May and workers gathered at many oil instillations the evening before to celebrate at the stroke of midnight.
Oil revenues have largely served to underwrite the Bolivaran revolution in Venezuela, and will continue to do so. But other industries in Venezuela have also been nationalised.
As part of his platform for reelection as President last December, Hugo Chavez called for the nationalisation of all strategic industries. Since his re-election Venezuela's biggest telecoms company and six electricity suppliers have been taken into state control.
Furthermore Chavez has now announced his intention to withdraw Venezuela from the IMF and World Bank.
The only other major countries in the world outside these institutions are Cuba and North Korea, significantly the only two countries forming part of what was once the 'socialist camp' where capitalism has not been restored.
Instead Venezuela's vast oil revenues will be used to establish a new "Bank of the South" as an alternative for Latin American and other developing countries, at more favourable terms than conventional borrowing, and without IMF-World Bank "strings" attached.
The decline of the dollar in recent years has meant that countries running large surpluses - like Venezuela and China - would do better to lend their money at zero interest than to hold it in dollars.
Venezuela together with Cuba has also been instrumental in the formation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) as a regional counterweight to the US sponsored FTAA.
Subsequently Bolivia and Nicaragua have joined ALBA with other Latin American countries likely to follow.
ALBA exists in order to foster mutual economic co-operation between its member states. Venezuela and Nicaragua for example agreed to the joint construction of an oil refinery in Nicaragua. Cuban doctors have also returned to Nicaragua for the first time since 1990 when they were kicked out of the country under US pressure.
At the same time though there is a hard political edge behind the formation of ALBA. At the ALBA conference in Venezuela at the end of April Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela all announced that they were withdrawing from the World Bank's International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
A secret international trade court, ICSID was used by the US multinational Bechtel in 2001 to sue Bolivia for US$25 million. The reason? The Bolivian government had cancelled Bechtel's contract to
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against Chavez in Latin America 2002, one thing that has been striking is the increasing inability of US imperialism to intervene into Venezuela and into the region generally.
The US ruling class is becoming increasingly divided over the fact it is less and less likely to win the war in Iraq.
Military involvement in Iraq may also have diverted the US attention away from what was happening in their "own backyard" in Latin America.
This situation will change. Venezuela's oil reserves may even be greater than those of Iraq and as such will become an even more attractive prize for US imperialism if it is forced out of Iraq. We can expect US imperialism to do anything and everything in its power to try to destroy the Bolivarian revolution.