DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

Click here for the Spanish version of this talk

[The general line of the following report was adopted by the DSP National Committee meeting on April 29 2007.]

This report seeks to reaffirm the general line and positions on the current phase of the Bolivarian revolution in the February 12 report adopted by the DSP National Executive. Subsequent events have shown the general analysis, of the opening of a new phase in the class struggle since the December 3 presidential elections, to be correct. The report contains more information on some of the analysis and formulations raised in this report, that comrades should refer in order to complement and flesh out this report.

By Simon Butler, Adelaide branch

[The following is a constribution to the DSP's internal discussion on Venezuela's revolution.]

Comrade Marce Cameron’s recent article “The State and Revolution in Venezuela” (Marce Cameron, The Activist Vol 17, # 1) contains a lengthy discussion on the Marxist view of the state and the class nature of Venezuelan state in particular. As part of his discussion Comrade Marce introduces a new but mistaken criteria for identifying for class nature of a state.

By Marce Cameron, Syndey branch

[The following is a constribution to the DSP's internal discussion on Venezuela's revolution.]

Comrade Stuart Munckton’s discussion contribution “Venezuela’s battle in the countryside and the ‘revolution within the revolution’” (The Activist Volume 16, No. 8) takes up the important question of the class nature of the Venezuelan state.

By Stuart Munckton, Sydney branch

[The following is a constribution to the DSP's internal discussion on Venezuela's revolution.]

In mid-September, the Ezquiel Zamora National Campesino Front (FNCEZ), one of the two major peasant organisations in Venezuela, released a statement entitled “Let us fight the neoliberals who have infiltrated the revolution”, in response to the arrest of a number of peasants by police for their role in a FNCEZ-organised occupation of the Corporation of the Andes central offices. CorpoAndes is a state institution whose role is to oversee economic development in the region.

By Stuart Munckton

[Based on the talk presented to the DSP Socialist Summer School January 4-7]

Introduction

In this talk I want to look at some of the key lessons that can be drawn out of the Bolivarian revolution, eight years in from the election of Hugo Chavez as president in December 1998.

These lessons are crucial because it is the first revolution to open up since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s that supposedly ended the question of revolution. This had a big impact on radicals around the world, as well as mass consciousness. It raised the question of whether it was even possible to struggle against the crimes of the system at all. A whole of lot of lessons from the 20^th century, things often understood by radicals as given truths, were thrown out. In some ways it amounted to a counterrevolution in consciousness.

By Katherine Bradstreet

[Part two of an introduction to the Bolivarian Revolution, covering the period February 2003 to December 2006, presented at the DSP Socialist Summer School, Sydney, January 2007. Part one, covering January 1958 to February 2003, was presented by Marcus Pabian.]

Since the end of 2002, there have been huge developments in Venezuela. This next part of the workshop will go through some of the initiatives that have been undertaken, and will try to put together a bit of a picture of the revolution.

By Marcus Pabian

[Part one of an introduction to the Bolivarian Revolution, covering the period January 1958 to February 2003, presented at the DSP Socialist Summer School, Sydney January 2007, in the series on Latin America. Part two, covering February 2003 to December 2006, was presented by Katherine Bradstreet]

The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela has established a socialist revolution in the 21^st century that is winning the support of millions of people.

By Stuart Munckton

[The general line of this report was adopted unanimously on February 12 by the DSP's National Executive.]

The victory in the December elections

The victory of President Hugo Chavez in the December 3 presidential elections, on an explicit platform of creating socialism, was a major victory in the class struggle in Venezuela, and it opens the way to a new phase in the struggle to decisively deepen the revolution, breaking the political power of the objectively pro-capitalist state bureaucracy, and the economic power of the capitalist class. This victory cannot be understood either in purely electoral terms, or in a purely “Chavista versus opposition” framework.