Venezuela: Congress of the Nation Workers’ Union (UNT)

We reproduce here an edited version of the FLT statement on the recent UNT(1) 2nd Congress held in May.(2) What could have been a major step towards working class independence from Chavez ended in a split between several factions, all competing to be the best Chavistas. Most significant, it is clear that the so-called Trotskyist groups in the UNT are not fighting for political independence from Chavez. This confirms our analysis that the ex-Trotskyists in Venezuela are acting as they are in other countries as the left wing of the popular front in Latin America.


Workers struggle sacrificed to the petrodollar bourgeoisie

Between last May 25-27 at the Army Officer's Club in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, the second congress of the National Union of Workers (UNT)(3), was held. The UNT is the most important workers union in Venezuela with more than 2000 delegates representing a million or more Venezuelan workers.[i]

The resolutions of the 2nd Congress were of crucial importance for the working class not only of Venezuela, but of all Latin America. It offered the possibility of raising an independent working class program against the bourgeois government of Chavez.(4) Such a program would have been a hard blow against the politics of class collaboration which ‘expropriates’ the anti-imperialist struggle of the Venezuelan masses, strangles the Bolivian and Ecuadorian revolutions, and subordinates workers before the bourgeoisie of the whole continent.

But its resolutions, once more, put the masses at the feet of the exploiters and tied the hands of the Venezuelan and Latin American working class. It was also one more confirmation – if such were needed – of the complete bankruptcy of the fake Trotskyists who are “running a race” to see who can be a better Chavez than Chavez himself. Let’s see what happened in the Congress of the UNT and make some conclusions about the role of the fake Trotskyists organisations in Argentina.

“Ten million votes to re-elect Chavez!”

In the Congress, a minority led by Marcela Maspero, broke from the Congress and left the UNT. This sector, dominated by cadres and leaders of the old Bolivariana Force of the Workers (a failed attempt to build a Chavista central Workers Union), and adherents of Chavismo, refused to allow the election of UNT officers in September, arguing that the main priority was the campaign for “ten million votes for Chavez” to win the presidential election in December.

The leaders of the majority (headed by Orlando Chirinos of the UIT(5) to which both factions of the MST in Argentina belong (6) proposed elections in September, but they put as a condition the first resolution had to be… that the UNT and the workers must guarantee first of any other thing 10 million votes for Chavez. Moreover, these leaders denounce in their press a “provocation” by the minority, who set up the ridiculous argument that most of us, the majority delegates don’t support Chavez”. This they say is “a lie”. (Alternativa Socialista N° 431).(7)

Shamelessly, after urging the workers to vote that their main task is to guarantee the re-election of a bourgeois government, they then urged them to vote that “the UNT is a autonomous union, independent of the government”. What do these fake Trotskyists understand by “an independent” union federation? That “the re-election of president Chavez and the independence of the UNT must be simultaneously supported so as to criticize (Chavez) whenever it is necessary…” (ídem).

Imagine that the left groups were leading the Argentinean CGT (8) in 1973 and had launched a campaign for supporting the Peron-Peron slate. What would every class-conscious worker have said? A betrayal of the proletarian cause!. Exactly! The heroic working class militants of the Cordobazo (9), the Vivorazo (10), Sitrac-Sitram (11), the Villazo (12), would have said exactly what we say about the fake Trotskyists: Servants of the bourgeoisie! Enemies of the proletarian revolution!
 
There is no doubt. Today the fake Trotskyists in Venezuela are the UNT bureaucracy, playing at the same time the role of Stalinism and that of the treacherous union bureaucracies in the other countries of Latin America. Politically they support Chavez, that ally of Kirchner and Repsol.

MAS and PO: working to get ten million “critical” votes… for Chavez

It is impossible to deny that so far, the leaders of the UIT are winning the race to see who is the most “Chavista”. But stepping on their heels are all the other fake Trotskyists, for example the MAS in Argentina and its sister group inside the Venezuelan PRS (the Petare current).

The MAS says it wants to stand “independent worker candidates” but, as the PRS is not legal this “is not possible”. Besides, “most of the workers are politically Chavistas”, and that this cannot be ignored, in so far as “the vote is (something) tactical”. (Socialismo o Barbarie N° 80) (13). For that reason, it ends up calling for a “critical vote”… for Chavez, so that this bourgeois government is re-elected… “critically”.

On the other hand, the PO in Argentina tries to hide it is for “the critical” vote for Chavez. Thus, while it says that voting in the congress of the UNT for “the re-election of Chavez as an strategic policy shows that, despite the differences, the Workers Central Union is under the influence of bourgeois nationalism”, it ends up agreeing with the MAS, in that the vote “is tactical”. Moreover it declares: “it is not a question of our preference for one or another candidate, this is (merely) a tactical issue. It cannot become the main subject matter of a strategic campaign” (Prensa Obrera N° 950, June 15, 2006).(14)

At the end of the day, MAS and PO’s positions could be summarised in a single slogan: “For ten million critical votes… for Chavez”.

PTS: “Spoil your ballot”… sit on the fence, do not face Chavez even in the election

The PTS and its sister group in Venezuela –also a member of the PRS –criticizes those who call for a vote for Chavez as giving in to “bourgeois nationalism”. They prefer to “raise a workers and socialist perspective” by asking people to be very bold, and… spoil their votes.

But the spoiled vote has nothing to do with class politics in the context of bourgeois elections. Moreover, most of the pro-imperialist and pro-coup bourgeois opposition parties and groups will be campaigning for abstention or a blank vote in December elections. The PTS itself already called for a vote for Chavez in the August 2004 referendum; now in order not to appear as openly “Chavista”, it has decided to go for a blank vote. This formula has overall the “virtue” of letting them avoid a confrontation with Chavez. They also reneg on the obligation of telling workers “do not vote for him because he is a bourgeois”.

The politics of class independence in the Venezuelan elections

First we have to expose the deception of “tactical voting” used by the fake Trotskyists. They use this to justify setting up popular fronts or to support “progressive” bourgeois candidates. For revolutionaries, tactics in bourgeois elections are like all tactics, revolutionary tactics. They have to advance the proletarian principles and strategy: in the first place, the elementary principle of class independence. That is to say, it is possible to vote tactically for a workers party or workers candidate, but never for a bourgeois party or candidate.

Second, it is pure deception to call for a ‘tactical vote’ because “there are no conditions” that allow for independent worker candidates in Venezuela, when the UNT exists, a union federation with great authority among the workers! Here was a congress with 2000 worker delegates, one of them could have been chosen as candidate for president. Here is a workers organization which has all the authority to make a campaign for 10 million votes for a UNT worker president and a vice-president from the poor peasants. Such a campaign would have opened the road to a workers and peasants’ government able to break completely with imperialism, solve the land problem and meet the needs of the workers and the exploited people! No doubt that if this resolution had been passed by a show of hands in the congress of workers delegates of the UNT, no legal obstacle could have prevented that campaign for a workers candidacy from going ahead!

An independent working class program

Such a class campaign that raised with clarity a program and an independent workers strategy would had aroused the enormous enthusiasm of the Venezuelan, the Latin America and the United States working class:

· Not even a drop of Venezuelan oil to the US exploiters, slave-traffickers of Latin American immigrants!

· No oil to massacre our Iraqi brothers and sisters, and the workers and exploited from New Orleans!

· For the complete re-nationalization, without compensation and under workers control of oil, and the rest of privatized companies!

· Expropriation without compensation of all the large estates and land for distribution among the poor farmers!

· For decent jobs and living wages for all, with the sliding scale of wages and working hours!

· Minimum wage set at the level of the family shopping basket and indexed according to inflation!

· Down with all the antistrike laws!

· Free quality public Health and Education, on the basis of the expropriation of the private schools and hospitals, the repudiation of the external debt and the application of progressive taxes on the “31 families” (15) and the monopolies!

· A class campaign for a program that calls on the workers and the exploited to vote for a presidential candidate of the UNT, that is, not to vote for Chavez!
Who can doubt that this would galvanize the embattled Bolivian working class that has begun to resist Morales repressive government! It would also inspire the Argentinean working class that refuses to accept the miserable wages and work conditions imposed on them by the union bureaucracy. It would motivate the US working class which today begins to wake up only to be told by the WSF to kneel at the feet of the Democratic Party of Clinton and the Kennedys, so praised by Chavez!

None of the currents of the UNT or of the left in Venezuela want a class program

The ex-Trotskyists that lead the UNT know well that this is possible. But they want to avoid it at all costs. They have demonstrated, and continue to demonstrate, that they are the faithful subjects of Chavez; self-confessed reformists whose role is to prevent any move towards class independence by the workers, and to make the latter subservient to the “progressive” bourgeois and the “patriotic” military.

We are not then dealing with “a tactical” problem, but one of principles: because what these currents say to the working class is that the liberation of the workers will not be the work of the workers themselves, but of bourgeois leaders like Chávez.

The ex-Trotskyists supporting Chavez are the same tendencies that in Brazil called for a vote for the popular front of Lula-Alencar, and who are now supporting the class collaborationist government in Bolivia. They are the “theoreticians” who preach the need to create “worker parties based on the unions”. But then where they lead a union federation as the UNT in Venezuela, they refuse to put up a workers candidate for the presidential elections!

As Trotsky said, whoever gives even the slightest political support to a bourgeois government, renounces its revolutionary overthrow by the masses. That is, they renounce the workers’, socialist revolution. These servants of Chavez have deserted the proletarian revolution.

International Coordination Secretariat of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction




Notes

(1) Workers National Union

(2) This statement first appeared in the paper of the Argentine group Workers Democracy.

(3) The UNT was born of the rank and file revolt against the pro-coup, pro-imperialist CTV, the old Workers Central of Venezuela, with a notoriously corrupt and bureaucratic leadership affiliated to Accion Democratica, once the most important bourgeois party, and totally subservient to the establishment.

(4) We say that Chavez is a ‘Bonapartist’ leader of a bourgeois state with a bourgeois constitution, balancing between imperialism, the national bourgeoisie and the working masses. Despite Chavez ‘left’ persona, the Venezuela state defends bourgeois property and ‘nationalised’ property remains that of the bourgeois state. Nevertheless we support Chavez in a united front against imperialism, arguing that only a revolutionary workers movement is capable of defeating imperialism and the Venezuelan national bourgeoisie.

(5) The UIT is one of the international fractions that came out of the Morenoist LIT-CI after the Argentinean MST split the MAS. The UIT was until recently the international organization of the MST and its “sister” groups.

(6) The MST now has split in two irreconcilable fractions, the fraction”2” (led by Pedro Soranz) has just taken control of the UIT, expelling the fraction “1”.

(7) Socialist Alternative.

(8) CGT: Central General de Trabajadores, or Workers Central Union federation. In 1973 it was led by the Peronist bureaucracy (and most of the second half of the 20th century). In 1973 the Peronist Party made the then president (also a Peronist, but of a somewhat left-leaning wing) resign, so that there could be new elections, and to allow General Peron to run for his third presidency. His wife Isabelita Peron ran as vice-president.

(9) Cordobazo: On May 29, 1969, and as a part of the worldwide revolutionary wave that was sweeping almost every country in Latin America and most of the world, there was a semi-insurrection in Cordoba, Argentina’s second city, and a main industrial center at the time. Having been preceded by very combative and persistent student revolts in several Universites all over the country, the Cordobazo began as a protest against the elimination of the so-called ‘English Saturday’ (any time over the half day was paid as time-and-a-half - 50% more) and ended with the defeat of the police that had been called to repress the demonstrations and marches that the workers the owners of Cordoba had made for two or three days. The police had to quit the city and the army was called to replace it. It is important to remember that in 1969, there was a military dictatorship in charge of the government. The Cordobazo opened way to a revolutionary period in Argentina and Latin America that came to an end with the bloody dictatorships of Videla and Co. in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, etc.

(10) The Vivorazo was another semi-insurrection some time after the Cordobazo, that put Rosario (the third largest Argentinean city, also a main industrial center and the second port of the country) in the hands of the workers for a time.

(11) Sitrac and Sitram were two factory unions (initially set-up as “yellow” unions by the bosses and the bourgeois government to divide and defeat the auto-workers who were affiliated to the SMATA, or Autoworkers United Union). But they shot themselves in the foot. The young workers of the two most important factories in Cordoba –FIAT Materfer, that manufactured electric motors and electric train wagons, and FIAT Concord, that manufactured big electric motors for power stations, dams, etc.- in 1970 defeated the “yellow” bureaucracy in each factory, united the two unions, creating the SITRAC-SITRAM Union, and immediately called for a “working-class nationwide congress of the rank and file, with mandated delegates of every workplace in the country” to vote a working-class program to find a breakthrough for the crisis-ridden Argentina. The two congresses that were held under the name of “Classism”, convened hundreds of militant delegates. “Classism” as a phenomenon was very important, because up to that time, and from the late forties, the previous generations of workers had been mainly Peronist. Unfortunately most the ‘classist’ vanguard that it created were recruited to the various guerrilla currents inspired in Cuban ‘guerrillasim’ (including fake-Trotskyist ones). There were other centrist currents too, as well as left-Peronists, Stalinists, etc. All of them did their utmost to frustrate the opportunity for the workers to take the country in their hands.

(12) Villazo, a semi-insurrection in Villa Constitucion, one of the industrial towns that form the industrial belt running from Buenos Aires City (with its Great Buenos Aires Area) up to Rosario City, some 400km of factories, steelworks, oil refineries, ports, etc., along the coast of the rivers Parana and Plate. The Villazo was the last and most important semi-insurrection of the industrial workers taking a city and a series of big factories in their hands, before the military coup that put Videla and Co. in power. It was brutally repressed, in spite of the support and sympathy from the Argentine workers and students, thanks to the union bureaucracy leaving it isolated, and the left vacillating and capitulating to the pressure of the Stalinists, the Peronist bureaucracy, etc. The centrists in those years did not want to be labeled “guerrillas”, so they never raised slogans about self-defense, workers’ armed militia, etc., tending to raise mostly economic (unionist) slogans plus abstract socialist propaganda.

(13) Socialism or Barbarism

(14) Workers Press.

(15) “31 families”. Name for the richest group of Venezuelan families. They were closely intertwined with imperialist interests for centuries. Most of their members do not even live in Venezuela.

 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix

Unite! Organiser enthusiastic about Chavez and Morales

Auckland Unite organiser Mike Treen recently returned from a visit to Venezuela and Boliva. He spoke in Auckland to a meeting organised by GPJA. Treen was ethusiastic about Chavez. “He is ahead of the workers and is leading the revolution”. The same with Morales in Bolivia. “The revolution will not happen without Morales”. This is the Australian Green Left position.

In reponse to a question from a CWG comrade who stressed the need for the working class to be armed and politically independent of Chavez and Morales, Treen rejected the need for the independence of workers from Chavez and Morales. Despite the splits in the UNT recent congress, Treen said it was good that they all supported the re-election of Chavez.

A Socialist Workers speaker at the meeting spoke of a ‘sort of dual power’ in Venezuela. If this term is being used in the Leninist sense, this can only mean that the SWO thinks that Chavez represents the workers in the state, rather than representing the bourgeois in containing and suppressing the workers revolution.

Whatever their apparent differences, both Treen and the SWO speaker substitute Chavez and his political machine for the working class. This confirms our view that Unite and SWO, who have combined to form the Worker’s Charter in NZ, are following the Australian Green Left closely as a cheerleader for the Boliviarian Revolution and left wing of the popular front in Latin America. (see article above).



From Class Struggle 67 June/July 2006

Chavez, Venezuela, oil and workers control

 Nationalize Big Oil, Trade with Venezuela!

Even before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast of the US the oil companies had put their prices up. Oil rose to over US$70 a barrel. It is a finite, non-renewable source of energy. Intense competition for oil is behind the invasion of Iraq and the instability in central Asia. It underlies the tension between Venezuela and the US. So the crisis over peak oil is symptomatic of capitalism in deep shits. Capitalism cannot solve this crisis without massive destruction. It is necessary to work out a strategy for the socialization of oil and other privately owned resources so that a global socialist planned economy can arise to rescue humanity and the planet from total destruction.


The Oil Crisis is Capitalism’s Crisis

Oil is a key input into industry and necessary for the survival of capitalism. No substitute is capable of stepping into the role oil plays without a huge jump in the cost of production. Therefore the imperialist countries driven by Big Oil will pursue increasingly aggressive policies to get control of this diminishing supply. We face a future of rapid decent into wars and destruction of whole populations such as Iraq (and on a smaller scale working class New Orleans) unless we challenge the ownership and control of capitalism.

The future alternative to capitalism is socialism. But it is unlikely to come in one sudden rush. We need to look for ways to make the transition to socialism by first regulating and controlling the market, and then moving progressively toward the nationalization and socialization of the major resources, industries and banks under the ownership and control of workers’ governments.

In Latin America we can see a level of resistance to capitalist globalization and its destruction that points the way towards this alternative socialist future. In Argentina in 2001 the population rebelled against neo-liberal austerity and threw out the government forcing a default on the national debt. In Bolivia the masses are in a state of almost permanent revolt against oil companies exploiting the gas resources. In Brazil the government of Lula is in crisis because it has not met its promises to its worker supporters. In Chile there has been mass resistance to the FTA with the US.

Venezuela creates an opportunity

Most significant, in Venezuela there is a left populist government able to use its oil wealth to force through some changes to the global oil market. Chavez has introduced cheap oil for the Caribbean and other Latin American countries, and done a bilateral deal with China. He has also made some of the oil companies change their contracts and enter joint ventures on terms more favorable to Venezuela.

While these are important steps in the attempt to find alternatives to the dominance of the oil majors, they are as yet small steps. The states concerned are not directly challenging the fundamental interests of the oil companies –their ability to set the prices and profits of the oil industry even though they may not technically own the oil fields. That is, Venezuela’s oil may be nationalized but it is not yet socialized in the hands of the masses of workers and peasants of that country.

Nationalization is not Socialization

Nationalized property remains the property of the capitalist state and the capitalist class as a whole. That’s why nationalization often acts to subsidize private profits against workers interests. This can be seen from the fact that Chavez continues to supply oil to the US which can use it for its military machine in Iraq. Chavez has also recently offered oil to make up the loss of production resulting from a strike by Ecuadorian state oil workers, drawing a rebuke from Venezuelan state oil workers. And in order to guarantee production Chavez backs no-strike legislation against state workers in Argentina and at home. Similarly, Iraq’s oil remains nationalized, but that does not stop the oil majors from raking off massive profits through controlling the production and marketing of Iraqi oil, and of running the oil fields under military occupation.

The goal in Venezuela (and Bolivia, Brazil, Iraq etc) must be to support the nationalization of oil and an increase in the share of oil wealth being retained for distribution to meet the peoples’ needs, as a platform for the fight for the socialization of oil under the control of the workers and peasants’ organisations and revolutionary governments. This cannot happen in one country alone. An alternative common market made up of all countries exploited and oppressed by imperialism has to be built so that there is an economic base for the construction of a world socialist movement to carry the struggle to its completion. This means in each country we need to work out a series of steps to further this international strategy.

Solving New Zealand’s oil crisis

New Zealand’s oil crisis results from a lack of its own oil and dependence on Big Oil. We need to start first by removing petrol taxes and shifting the tax burden onto business which gains most from subsidized roading. Then we need to nationalize the oil industry under workers’ control and import oil from Venezuela in exchange for agricultural commodities and technology. We can repeat this with other countries breaking free from the dictates of the global market. For example, gas under the control of Bolivian workers and peasants could be shipped to NZ in exchange for agricultural expertise to convert coca to some other economic crop. To do this we (and of course our trading partners) would have to repudiate all Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and WTO agreements that limit the actions of the sovereign national state to ‘expropriate’ foreign investments, as well as the punitive financial regimes of the IMF and World Bank.

Instead of signing an FTA with the ‘Blairite’ Lagos government in Chile which gives multinational capital freedom to trade and invest with few national constraints, NZ could target its expertise to develop agriculture in exchange for industrial goods like copper. Or in Brazil provide technical advice to develop agriculture resulting from land reform. To make this possible aggressive multinationals such as Fonterra which (with its partner Nestle) plans to dominate the Latin American dairy industry, would become a joint venture between its farmer owners and the NZ state to cooperate in the development of this industry in partnership with the peasant owners in similar cooperative/state ventures.

No capitalist party in NZ would be willing to take these steps so it is necessary to build a socialist movement in NZ that can join in the international struggle to make sure that expropriations are put under workers control and socialized as the basis of a planned global socialist economy and society. But as a first step along this road we must raise the demand now for the nationalization of the oil industry and for barter trade with Venezuela!


NATIONALISE THE OIL INDUSTRY!

TRADE OIL FOR FOOD WITH VENEZUELA!

SMASH THE FTAs, WTO, IMF AND WORLD BANK!

FOR A UNITED SOCIALIST STATES OF THE PACIFIC!

 

 

15th World Youth and Student Festival August 2005
Chavez on the 'peaceful road to socialism'?
The mounting US attack on Venezuela by Condoleezza Rice, Rums field etc and Pat Robertson’s death threat against Chavez etc – raises the red bogey of Chavez conspiring with Castro to make a socialist revolution in Bolivia that can spread to the rest of Latin America. Many of the 15,000 who attended the recent World Youth and Student Festival in Caracas think it is true.

While Chávez was in Argentina, [see article below] the "16th World Festival of Youth and Students" was opened in Venezuela. It was organized by the World Social Forum. One of the guest ‘stars’ was Evo Morales of Bolivia. This was no coincidence. In this festival Evo Morales was held up as the next president of Bolivia. At the same time the ‘power ring’ [i.e. the economic, political and military containment of the Bolivian revolution] was strengthened.

Thus the WSF used its Youth and Student Festival to organize its continental politics of strangling the Bolivian revolution. At the same time, it instructed its ‘left wing’ –the liquidators of Trotskyism – to hold another ‘encounter’ in La Paz on 12-14 August, so that it could collaborate with the Lula labor bureaucracy of the CUT of Brazil, and Solares (Castroite leader of the COB –union central - in Bolivia) etc, to add its weight to the containment of the Bolivian revolution.

In the La Paz meeting, held in secret and behind the backs of the masses of the revolutionary workers vanguard of El Alto, (working class city adjoining La Paz) this collection of treacherous fake Trotskyists and bureaucrats resolved to put up a reformist workers party under the name of the “political Instrument of the Workers” to participate in the elections of December.

They buried the resolutions of the 8 June of the COR (regional COB) El Alto; aborted the reconvening of the national congress of delegates of the Originary Popular Assembly (Indigenous and Popular Assembly) and tried to isolate and confuse the vanguard that fights for workers and peasants soviets and centralised militias. In effect, this ‘encounter’ backed Morales’ truce with President Rodriguez and the bourgeois regime.

While some of their delegates went to the encounter in Bolivia, at the Festival in Venezuela were the currents of Alan Woods, the MST of Argentina and other groups of the UIT-CI, among others. There, not surprisingly, they put themselves under the authority of Chávez and Fidel Castro, the Castroite bureaucracy, and the imposter Celia Hart Santamaria of the supposed ‘Trotskyist wing’ of the Cuban Communist Party. Just as Stalinism in the ‘80s organized the ‘Coffee Brigades’ to support the policy of the Castroism and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, today the renegades of Trotskyism take the lead in organizing support for Chávez.

Celia Hart, on May 1st 2005, in its article called ‘A ghost crosses America’, called for the “unity of revolutionaries”, to found a “continental communist organization” combining “sectarian” groups and “socialist or ant capitalist organizations” into an “organization of organizations”. In other words, she called on the left including the liquidators of Trotskyism, to unite under the control of the Cuban Communist Party, as the "left wing" of the World Social Forum.

The WSF needs a class collaborationist ‘left wing’ to play the leading role in containing the masses because the original promoters of the WSF are today increasingly discredited. They are implicated directly in pro-imperialist governments and bourgeois regimes attacking the masses, like Lula in Brazil, Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay, Lagos in Chile; or open supporters of these regimes like the CTA (state workers union) and Castroism which backs Kirchner in Argentina; or getting ready to play this role in government, like Evo Morales in Bolivia. Moreover, the WSF has already lost its "poster boy", Colonel Gutiérrez, at hands of the masses in Ecuador. [see article on Ecuador]

In the case of Chávez, they need him so they can maintain the bourgeois state behind the painting of the ‘Bolivarian revolution’. And in the case of the Castroite bureaucracy, they need the ‘left wing’ to hide their betrayals of the Latin American revolution and its policy of capitalist restoration in Cuba.

So today, in the Festival of Youth in Venezuela, the task of coordinating and centralising the ‘left’ road block stopping the revolution is being carried out by the traitors to Trotskyism. Celia Hart Santamaría could not come to the Festival, so her role was filled by her lieutenant and official guest, Alan Woods of the ‘Trotskyist’ International Marxist Tendency. Next to him appeared Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly of Cuba; Shafik Handal of the FMLN of El Salvador and Daniel Ortega of the FSLN of Nicaragua - the main leaders, after Fidel Castro, of the Central American revolution in the ' 80s -, as well as Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe and other ‘personalities’ of the Bolivian ‘left wing’.

The Argentinean MST-UIT newspaper Socialist Alternative N° 409, in an article signed by its Youth, recognises cynically that the Festival “does not take in any sense a class perspective”, and yet endorses its purpose. It then states that “the most important aspect of the festival is the political space that is going to unfold. With the arrival of Lula’s government [for which their current in Brazil called for a vote while in a popular front with bourgeois parties! Editor] and the acceleration of the experience of the Latin American masses with the centre-left governments, has created the most important reformist space in recent last years: the Forum of Porto Alegre. In this way it opens a space so that the revolutionary organizations can engage in a dialogue with sections of the masses no longer bound to the centre-left parties, and allows us to influence and advance their politics.”

On this basis, they support, under the suggestive subtitle "To advance without sectarianism", participation in the Festival for "achieving much more unity among all those that fight against imperialism and who think that the capitalist model is exhausted completely. Knowing that the task of confronting this system will not happen unless led by Trotskyists, it is more important that ever to arrive at clear agreements on as many points as possible, among organizations, groups and personalities on various aspects of world politics."

They finish by saying that they will take this proposal from the Festival in Venezuela to the international level: “to create an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist international coordination, that can arrive at points of agreement and to make united political campaigns in support of the workers and popular sectors in struggle”. Likewise, Alan Woods dedicated himself to the concrete task of creating that "continental organization" with Celia Hart.

Thus, the delegations, the Venezuelan CMR, the Communist Party of Venezuela, Felipe Quispe of Bolivia, the M-28 and Fogata of Venezuela, the Front of University Students and the front of Colombian Secondary Students, the MRTA of Peru, the "Continental Current Bolivariana" CCB) etc., all agree with the politics of Celia Hart Santamaría. And not by chance: as Allan Woods of the IMT, the UIT-CI and its section MST of Argentina are all part of this third batch of Menshevism and as the betrayers of Trotskyism form the ‘left wing’ of the World Social Forum, a true counter-revolutionary international. 

 

Abridged from Workers Democracy 19 August 2005

Chavez visited Argentina to sign off on a deal to build two new oil tankers. Here's a commentary on Chavez attitude towards the Santiago River shipbuilders.
CHÁVEZ VISITS THE SANTIAGO RIVER SHIPYARDS (ARS)

On 11 of August, the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, visited Argentina to sign the agreement for the construction of two oil tankers at the River Santiago Shipyard (ARS), giving a boost to the government campaign of Kirchner and Solá (State Governor) for the creation of a thousand new jobs. In a speech to the workers Chávez called on them to support the government of Kirchner which he praised saying "They have changed things in this country since this man arrived at the Pink House (Presidential Palace)".

Like a demagogue he also praised the ARS as a "shipyard with dignity" because "imperialism did not own it" because the workers had “resisted the neo-liberal aggression". But that sweet talk did not last long, because immediately afterwards he told the workers that they must "finish the ships quickly” so they could get more work.

It seems that Chávez did not come to the ARS because he is a good employer sharing the interests of the Argentine workers. He came because he could get cheap manual labor where the wages are constantly reduced by inflation. For Chávez it is excellent business building the ships in the ARS because the wages are on average $1100 (US$380) instead of $2000 to $3000 dollars a month in Spanish shipyards.

And like all bosses, Chavez wants to shorten the time of production to the maximum, because he knows that the faster the ships are built, the faster he will be able to export Venezuela’s oil. The chavista bourgeoisie wants sell more oil to Bush and US imperialism at $70 dollars a barrel, even though this allows the US to keep its military machine operating in Iraq and the Middle East.

And to guarantee that the workers will work harder and not go on strike, the Provincial governor Sola has passed a law to limit the right of strike. This is nothing new. It copies the law proposed by Chavez that workers in state companies, such as the PdVSA, [state oil] who go on strike can be sent to jail for years.

No strike laws are to prevent any problem or delay in the expansion of the oil industry. For those workers who protest: jail! Chávez wants to enslave manual labor in the ARS, and he imposes tough conditions of work so that workers do not have the right to complain, let alone ask for better conditions!

Chávez and Solá get their way in the ARS through the efforts of the collaboration of the union bureaucracy of Ate-cta. The same bureaucrats who have isolated the striking health workers at Garrahan [see article below] organised the meeting with Chavez at ARS so that nobody dared to ‘boo’ Chavez during his speech.

In order to police the meeting the bureaucrats brought some "pro-government piqueteros" of the FTV-CTA and Barrios de Pie who threatened physical violence against ARS workers. They make sure that the workers accept the bosses’ terms so they can be better exploited.

Shamefully, the internal commission of the ARS (combined unions) to which the PTS, PCR and the MST [centrist Trotskyist groups) belong, kept quite during the visit of Chavez and Sola, and the actions of the ATE-CTA bureaucracy. Although it is not a member of the internal commission of the ARS, the PO limited its criticisms to demanding that the 1000 jobs to be created be under the control of the organizations of unemployed people.

None of these currents, who call themselves revolutionaries called on the ARS workers to challenge Chávez’ deception, or alerted them to the plans of Sola and Kirchner to make them work like Chinese laborers. Or point out that if they strike for better wages they will be jailed or beaten up by the thugs of the FTV and Barrios de Pie – as they have done in Tucumán and Rosario – with the excuse that the ships being built for Chavez and his "Bolivarian revolution" cannot be delayed.

We know that the workers of the ARS want to work. We understand their joy and enthusiasm to know that the construction of the Venezuelan ships will guarantee work for them for some years. But we warn them that Chavez is a bourgeois employer who with Solá prepares the workers for super exploitation. In order to oppose this it is necessary to unite with the thousands of unemployed workers of the Berisso and Cove region (30% unemployed) and tell the employer's association of Chávez, Kirchner and Sola:

“If you want these ships faster, there is no problem. It is necessary to employ more workers to produce, to distribute the working hours between all the workers available, reducing the working day and with a basic wage of $1,800 a month!”

The solution is to unite with the workers of the Garrahan (Hospital workers on strike) who are in a struggle for a basic wage of $1,800 for all state employees. It is necessary to call on the TIES and the CTA to launch a national strike until our demands are met.

But in all this there is still a big problem. The oil tankers that are being built for Venezuela, may be used to transport the oil used to fuel the US military machine that massacres the Iraqi workers who are our class brothers and sisters. We cannot allow it!

The workers of the ARS have the duty to call on the Venezuelan workers to fight to prevent any oil being shipped for use in imperialist wars. And simultaneously to call them to fight together to stop the oil monopolies like Repsol or Texaco (which Chávez granted the oil rights to the Orinoco river basin) from plundering the hydrocarbons of our Bolivian class brothers and sisters!

Workers Democracy Argentina No 9 July 2005.

Asserting their independence of Chavez, here is a report of a message of solidarity of Venezuelan oil workers to Ecuadorian oil workers!
“We Are With You: Jósé Bodas, leader of Fedepetrol, the oil workers’ union of Venezuela, expresses solidarity with Ecuadorian strikers:

By Nelson Gámez, Thursday, 25/08/05 06:29pm

The national leader of Fedepetrol, José Bodas, from Puerto La Cruz, sent a declaration to the communications media of that city, in which [the Venezuelan oil workers] express solidarity with the Ecuadorian oil workers who have been carrying out a just struggle for two weeks in defense of their rights and of the communities of the Amazonian jungle area.

The communiqué says:

“Just as the Ecuadorian oil workers supported us three years ago in order to defeat the bosses’ sabotage of PDVSA, we are reciprocating that gesture of solidarity, by telling the workers and communities of the Ecuadorian Amazonian jungle that we support them unconditionally, that we reject the savage repression by the government of Alfredo Palacios, and we lament the fact that President Chavez has decided to send petroleum to that country, since with that action, in fact, the just strike movement of the workers and the inhabitants is being broken.

"We are pained to learn that the high-level commission of the Ecuadorian government, which will sign the accords with the Venezuelan government, is composed of people committed to the interests of the multinational [corporations], and that from their positions and functions for three years now they have not moved a finger to help us from Ecuador to overcome the offensive of the imperialists and coup-plotters against Venezuelan sovereignty, attacked by Fedecamaras, by the parties of the oligarchy, and by imperialism.

“We certainly do not expect that the representatives of the multinationals will take any action expressing solidarity with the peoples and workers of the world.

Their actions will always be determined by profits, so we are not surprised by the declarations by the US government, nor those of the European governments, which have saluted the deal by President Chavez to avoid the Ecuadorian oil crisis.

With that same fervor with which they defend their interests, they maintain their criminal silence in the face of deranged declarations of “reverend” terrorists, who call for the assassination of President Chavez through the US communications media.

“We wish to inform the public, that for our part, as workers, revolutionaries and socialists, we will never support the enemies of the workers, and we will never take any action that contributes to the defeat of the struggle of the workers anywhere on the planet.

Our place is in solidarity with our class brothers in Ecuador, who are fighting for better conditions in their lives and for resources to meet the urgent needs of communities that live in conditions of extreme poverty in the Amazonian jungle.”

The communiqué ends:

“[we appeal] to all the Venezuelan workers, to the UNT, to the organizations of peasants, indigenous peoples, students, and the popular masses, to make known our solidarity with the Ecuadorian oil workers. Their struggle is our struggle, just as the struggle of the Bolivian workers and people in defense of their hydrocarbons is our struggle.”

http://www.aporrea.org/dameverbo.php?docid=65078

 

From Class Struggle 63 Sept/Oct 2005

Terror in Apure: Workers must lead the Defence of Venezuela!

Coming just weeks after Chavez’ victory in the recall referendum with 58% of the vote a new massacre of soldiers and oil workers by anti-Chavez forces has occurred in Apure. Despite the apparent stability of Venezuela after the referendum it is clear that the anti-Chavez forces will use whatever means to destablise the country. We argue that Chavez cannot defend the workers and peasants of Venezuela, only the formation of workers, peasants and soldiers militias that are independent of Chavez can do that.

On September 17th five Venezuelan soldiers and one oil worker were killed near the town of Guasdualito, in a remote corner of Venezuela’s Apure province. The soldiers and workers had been searching for oil under the jungles and swamps of Apure. Two days later, the bodies of three oil workers were discovered near the scene of the first attack. The workers’ hands had been tied behind their backs. Three more bodies have since been discovered, strewn on a road near Guasdualito. They are thought to belong to the force that carried out the September 17th attack

The same Western media which lavishes attention on the execution of hostages in Iraq has almost completely ignored the Guasdualito killings. The politicians who shed crocodile tears over the fate of Western oil workers in Iraq have studiously ignored the murder of Venezuelan oil workers. Yet the Guasdualito killings are only the latest in a series of terror attacks against the people of Venezuela.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez flew to Guasdualito and told locals that the killings were part of ‘Washington’s war agenda’ to divide his country and Colombia and ‘sell lots of arms’.

The Colombian government has denied any involvement in the killings, claiming that they could have been carried out by a ‘pro-Chavez armed group’ called the ‘Bolivarian Liberation Front’. But the ‘Bolivarian Liberation Front’ exists only in the propaganda of the Colombian government, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, and the Bush administration. The spectre of the Front has been invoked again and again to justify the creation of opposition paramilitaries inside Venezuela, and to excuse aggressive Colombian ‘border policing’.

It is no surprise that Colombia has been a launching pad for renewed attacks on Venezuela. Alvaro Uribe, the most pro-US leader in South America, is fighting his own war against two left-wing Colombian guerrilla groups. US ‘military advisers’ fight alongside Uribe’s army and US aircraft criss-cross Colombian skies. Uribe has accused Chavez of aiding Colombia’s leftists; Bush’s government has gone one step further and claimed that Al Qaeda terrorists are using Venezuela’s Margarita Island as well as its border with Colombia as training grounds.

In reality, of course, it has been Colombian terrorists who have been crossing the border into Venezuela, where they try to destabilise the Chavez government with actions like the Guasdualito massacre. Most of the terrorists seem to belong to right-wing paramilitary groups aligned with the Uribe government and Venezuela’s opposition, but the possibility of the direct involvement of Colombian and US soldiers cannot be discounted. Colombian paramilitaries have not only appeared in isolated rural regions: in May of this year one hundred and thirty of them were discovered on the outskirts of Caracas, where they had apparently gathered to prepare an attack on Chavez.

Background to the current situation

One or two commentators have suggested that the Guasdualito attacks represent the beginning of a Contra-style terror campaign against the Chavez government and its supporters. In reality, terrorist attacks by the Venezuelan opposition and Colombian paramilitaries have been occurring for years in the Venezuelan countryside. Dozens members of pro-Chavez peasants’ associations have already been assassinated.

But the ongoing terror campaign Venezuela’s countryside has been overshadowed by the coup attempts of 2002 and the employers’ lockout of 2002-2003 which posed much greater threats to Chavez regime.

Chavez was rescued from the coup attempt and the lockout by the mobilisation of workers who took to the streets and the oil fields on their own initiative. After each attempt to remove Chavez failed, the opposition were quick to arrive at a deal with him to prevent the workers from taking power while they regrouped their forces. Chavez ‘pardoned’ the opposition, guaranteed the US oil supply and told the workers to go home. After the lockout failed, the US backed the agreement between Chavez and its representative, Jimmy Carter, the Venezuela opposition, and members of the Organisation of American States.

In the aftermath of its heavy defeat in the recent Presidential recall referendum, Venezuela’s opposition and its Colombian allies may choose to intensify the campaign of terror. A faction of the opposition denounced the referendum result as fraudulent, and used Venezuela’s private media to appeal unsuccessfully for a military coup and a popular uprising. They shot nine anti-Chavez protesters on the outskirts of Caracas, in an apparent attempt to repeat the faked ‘Chavez massacre’ used to justify the April 2002 coup.

The US ruling class quickly recognised the reality of the opposition’s latest election defeat. Re-assured by Chavez’ call for ‘national unity’ and the uninterrupted supply of Venezuela oil, at a time when the US is bogged down in Iraq, Jimmy Carter and the New York Times urged respect for the referendum result, criticised opposition calls for violence, and demanded a US dialogue with Chavez’s government, while Wall St responded with a healthy movement in stock values.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration has continued to keep the pressure on Chavez. At the beginning of September it used trumped-up human trafficking charges to slap 250 million dollars’ worth of sanctions on Venezuela. Fifteen US black hawk helicopters recently flew from Colombia deep into Venezuela, in a show of naked aggression. Chavez was forced to abandon plans to address the UN’s recent annual leaders’ meeting, after the US government refused to provide him with security or guarantee his safety.

Chavez army ‘reforms’

Chavez has responded to the Guasdualito massacre by announcing a major reform of his armed forces. The new ‘National Defence Plan’ will be ‘humanitarian-based’, and will aim to increase the morale of soldiers by educating them politically and giving them greater contact with the civilian population. Quoting Mao Zedong, Chavez told the people of Guasdualito that ‘In the end it will not be the side with the most arms that wins the war, but the side with the most morale’.

It is likely that Chavez is intending to purge the army of pro-opposition elements by sacking or demoting them and replacing them with loyal members of left-wing and workers’ organisations. Chavez may attempt to set up some sort of popular militia, under the control of the army, as part of the effort to dilute the power of hostile officers. After the discovery of the paramilitary force in May he announced that he wanted to find ways for the civilian population to ‘massively participate in the defence of the nation’. The army will probably also be forced to work more closely with the ‘Missions’ already set up to bypass the old opposition-controlled state bureaucracy and implement Chavez’s social policies.

Chavez has faced major opposition within the armed forces since 2000, when two hundred military men resigned en masse from his Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement. Soldiers who had fought beside Chavez during his 1992 coup were unable to tolerate the leftward trajectory of his administration. Since the April 2002 coup that briefly overthrew him Chavez has sought to purge the armed forces of these opponents, and to promote younger, loyal officers.

Chavez’s ‘National Defence Plan’ symbolises the general political programme of his government. Chavez talks of anti-imperialist war and a people’s army, but proposes no fundamental reform of the armed forces. His radical rhetoric hides a determination to work within the limits of capitalism and the capitalist state.

Chavez ‘Bonapartist’ role

Chavez was thrust into power by the mass mobilisations of workers and peasants against the neo-liberal economic attacks of the 1980s and 1990s. He came to power determined to be a ‘Bonapartist’ strongman balancing the interests of workers and capitalists against US imperialism and its local lackeys. Chavez wanted to develop a ‘national capitalism’ in opposition to US imperialism and globalisation. But the hostility of the vast majority of the Venezuelan capitalist class, who are little more than the lackeys of US business, forced Chavez to rely more and more heavily on his loyal army officers, and his mass support, among the poor workers of the barrios and the peasantry.

Chavez has enacted a number of progressive reforms, and replaced enemies in the state apparatus with representatives of workers’, peasants’ and indigenous organisations. But he has resisted calls to change Venezuelan society fundamentally by nationalising the economy under workers’ and peasants’ control.

As the self-styled successor to Simon Bolivar who fought for Venezuela’s independence from Spain, Chavez has illusions in finishing the revolution started by Boliva and creating an independent capitalist Venezuela in which workers, peasants, capitalists and state officials can all participate and share equitably in the national wealth.

But what Chavez doesn’t see is that national independence cannot succeed in a semi-colony dominated by imperialism unless it is won by the revolutionary workers leading the peasants in the overthrow of the state itself. As the defender of ‘state capitalism’ Chavez finds himself inevitably the defender of the private property of US imperialism against the threat of a socialist revolution.

Breaking the Sidor strike

The class character of Chavez’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’ was shown up very clearly during the bitter strike that took place at the Sidor steelworks in Bolivar state in April and May of this year. The biggest steel mill in South America, Sidor was privatised in 1997, and since then the steady casualisation of the workforce has caused a stream of industrial accidents.

When Sidor’s 11,000 workers went on strike demanding renationalisation Chavez's response was to side with their bosses and send in the National Guard, which opened fire on picketers on April the 29th. After 19 days the strike was broken, though none of the Sidor workers crossed the picket line.
The conflict at Sidor offers lessons for the Venezuelans menaced by cross-border raids and opposition assassination squads. An army which fires even rubber bullets and gas pellets on workers on behalf of a multinational company is not capable of protecting workers and peasants from imperialism.

Chavez cannot free the peasantry

Chavez’s own response to the Guasdualito massacre shows the gap between his Bolivarian politics and the interests of the Latin American people threatened by terrorism.

In his speech to the people of Guasdualito, Chavez claimed that Colombia’s right-wing paramilitaries were not normally ‘enemies of our country, but if they are in our territory, from that moment on they become our enemies, because they violate the sovereignty of Venezuela’.

Yet right-wing paramilitaries and the government that backs them together kill thousands of Colombians every year. Colombia has the worst safety record for trade unionists in the world, with scores dying every year from bullets and bombs. How can Colombia’s paramilitaries cease to be the deadly enemies of workers and peasants, just because they cross an invisible border?

If Chavez were a real revolutionary, he would denounce the Colombian paramilitaries wherever they operate, and give assistance to the Colombians who fight the paramilitaries and the Uribe government. But Chavez’s fear of offending the Colombian and US governments trumps any commitment he might feel to the Colombian opponents of imperialism and terrorism.

Most of the victims of violence in the countryside have been peasants struggling for the redistribution of land held by Venezuela’s capitalist class and by foreign landlords. In November 2001 the Chavez government responded to peasant pressure by passing the Land Reform Law, which provided for the nationalisation of seventy-five million acres of idle land. Opposition governors and National Assembly members reacted furiously, and managed to tie the land reform process up in red tape. Militant peasants responded by seizing land promised to them by Chavez. In some places they divided the land into individual titles; in other places they have established huge collective farms. Between the end of 2001 and the end of last year over five million acres of land was redistributed.

Not surprisingly, leaders of peasant co-operative associations continue to be prime targets for Venezuela’s terrorists. Chavez has repeatedly urged peasants not to defend themselves with arms. He wants them to rely on the protection of the army that opened fire on the workers of Sidor.

For Workers and peasants councils and militias!

In the cities of Venezuela, the workers of the barrios are also threatened by terrorism. Urban paramilitary groups set up barricades to ‘defend’ wealthy neighbourhoods, and snipe at left-wing demonstrators from rooftops. During the National Lockout of 2002-2003, right-wing forces firebombed buses carrying workers to oil installations, and assassinated pro-government union leaders. Chavez allied himself with workers during the lockout when it was his own survival that was at stake, but at Sidor he showed that he will use Venezuela’s ‘official’ army on behalf of the class that funds Venezuela’s terrorists.

The workplace-based National Organisation of Workers (UNT) and the barrio-based Bolivarian Circles have been amongst the biggest supporters of Chavez. The UNT formed only in August 2003 is organisationally independent of Chavez’s state and his party, the Fifth Republic Movement. Chavez refused to attend the founding conference of the UNT, in protest at its call for the nationalisation of the economy under workers’ control and the establishment of a workers’ government.

In the aftermath of the Sidor strike, sections of the UNT are reconsidering their political support for Chavez. Ramon Machuca, a leader of the Sidor strike, is running for the governorship of Bolivar state independently of the Fifth Republic Movement. Machuca is positioning himself as the champion of workers dissatisfied with the limitations of Chavez’s political programme, but political independence counts for little if it does not become armed independence. A Machuca governorship will not protect the workers of Sidor. Workers’ militia need to be established to defend the factories and barrios of Venezuela’s cities. The UNT and the Bolivarian Circles must arm their members. They must go to the barracks and win over the rank and file of Chavez army and split them from the officer corps.

Workers’ and peasants’ militia will give teeth to a movement to turn the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ from being a trap to contain and defeat the workers, into a program for socialist revolution.

· Only the nationalisation without compensation under workers control of the media under workers’ and peasants’ control can stop the stream of lies and provocations which the Venezuelan opposition uses to foment a coup or a US invasion.

· Only the nationalisation without compensation under workers control of private businesses, banks and of cultivated as well as idle land can kill the power of the Venezuelan capitalists who send death squads after peasants.

· Only the nationalisation without compensation under workers control of the property of multinational companies can break US power in Venezuela and make a proletarian internationalist foreign policy possible.

· Only the splitting of the army of the bourgeois state replacement of the old army with workers’ and peasants’ militia can prevent a repeat of the tragedy of Sidor.

For a Revolutionary Party

The international socialist and workers’ movement must oppose all attempts by US imperialism and its auxiliaries to terrorise and destabilise Venezuela, without sowing any illusions in the Chavez government. Many leftists have opposed US interference in Venezuela, protesting the coup of 2002 and the lockout of 2002-2003, but very few have even noticed Chavez’s repression of the workers of Sidor.

Many of the socialist currents influenced by the Stalinist or Castroist views that the national bourgeoisie are ‘progressive’ support Chavez politically, and sow illusions in the masses that the Bolivarian ‘Revolution’ can defeat imperialism. For example, the ‘Hands Off Venezuela’ campaign initiated by the International Marxist Committee has attracted support from political parties and trade unions around the world, and helped to raise awareness of US aggression in Venezuela, but it has been marred by the very uncritical attitude its leading figures show to Chavez’s government.

The current campaign of its tendency in Venezuela, the Revolutionary Marxist Current, to occupy the giant paper mill VENEPAL in Moron, Carabodo state, under threat of closure by its US owner Smurfit, makes the basic mistake of calling on Chavez as a bourgeois President to arm the workers and occupy the plant, instead of calling on them to arm themselves, occupy the plant and break from Chavez.

To the left of reformist groups like the RMC, a number of self-proclaimed Trotskyist groups understand that Chavez cannot help but turn his guns on the workers. They are prepared to defend Chavez against the US, but say they will never support him politically.

Yet when it came to the test, they gave a critical vote of confidence to Chavez against the opposition in the recall referendum. CWG too called for a critical vote for Chavez as a military bloc against the opposition. A minority in CWG still holds this position. But a majority of CWG now accepts that the effect of critical support was a vote of confidence in Chavez helping him to contain the masses from organising and arming independently.

This thrust all of the currents that voted confidence in Chavez into the role of left-wing cheerleaders of the World Social Forum (WSF). The WSF supports the governments of Chavez, Lula, Kirchner and Castro as being capable of making a two-stage transition from capitalism to ‘market socialism’ without the masses playing an independent and leading role.

In Aotearoa, the Alliance Party is in the same camp. It advertised a recent reception for the Venezuelan ambassador to Australia under the headline ‘The Bolivarian Revolution Comes to Wellington’. The equation of the revolutionary potential of Venezuela’s workers and peasants with Chavez and his state is both wrong and dangerous.

In Aotearoa and across the world, socialists and the workers’ movement should turn opposition to US aggression in Venezuelan into support for the armed independence of the workers and peasants who can alone defeat imperialism.

In practice this requires the urgent creation of a revolutionary party able to lead the worker and peasant masses to socialism. The CWG is for the creation of a revolutionary Trotskyist party in the ranks of the UNT, the Bolivarian circles and the peasant organisations.

That party must have as its program the central demand that these organisations call for a national congress that raises the call to break with Chavez’ ‘national unity’, with the Bolivarian state machine, and to form organs of workers’ power as the basis for a workers’ revolution and a socialist republic of Venezuela as part of a United Socialist States of Latin America!

For a Socialist Republic of Venezuela! 

From Class Struggle 58 October-November 2004