VENEZUELAN communists issued a May Day call to resist US-backed coup plotters and for working-class power yesterday.

Supporters of both the United Socialist Party (PSUV) government and the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) opposition coalition planned marches, the latter to the Supreme Justice Tribunal and the National Electoral Council to repeat the demand for an early presidential election.

A month of anti-government violence incited by the Mud has left 29 people dead and more than 500 injured — almost matching the toll for 2014’s year of putschist terror.

The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and its trade union the FNLCT saluted the workers of the world in the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, which they said had made possible the building of the first socialist state.

In a statement, they said class struggle around the world had “deepened and reerupted as an expression of the crisis in the capitalist system in its imperialist phase.”

Across Latin America, and especially in Venezuela, “US imperialism, with its local lackeys, is financing its final offensive to liquidate the incipient national liberation processes,” they said, and urged the working class to reject “petty-bourgeois reformists” and take control of the economy.

On Sunday President Nicolas Maduro celebrated the achievements of his government’s housing mission, handing over the keys to the 1.6 millionth home to its new owners.

He also announced a 60 per cent rise in the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, which has been fuelled by black-market currency traders who have smuggled tons of banknotes out of the country.