There is a serious danger of a new and even bigger war in the Middle East. US and Israeli war threats against Iran have bene going on and on. The excuse: the nuclear program of the Iranian regime. The real reason: rain is the only big and oil-rich state in the Middle East that does not abide by the American-imposed rules, does nog accept Amercan hegemony. For that reason, American rulers and strategic planners and their Israeli sidekicks consider Iran a threat that must be brought to heel. That is way they prepare a wave of bombing raids on Iran.

In recent weeks, the war threat seems to be receding just a little bit. Mike Mullen, Chief of Staff of the US military, is not too keen on war: “I’m fighting wo wars and I don’s need a third one”, he has been quoted as saying. (Paul Rogers, “Iran, Israel and the risk of war”, OpenDemocracy, 24 July). The threat of serious resistance in the whole region, and of Iranian closure of the Street of Hormuz, through which a large part of Middle Easter oil moves to their destination, may giove the war planners second thoughts. Oil prices, already rising, may only explode even further if war with Iran comes.

Some commentators conclude from these factors that war with Iran is becoming somewhat less likely. Tom Engelhardt, a few weeks ago, says of those that push for war: “It’s a reasonable proposition today – as it wasn’t perhaps a year ago – thast, whatever their desires, they will not, in the end, be able to to launch an attack on Iran; that, even where there’s a will, there may not be a way.” But we cannot be sure. As he himselrff admits: “for the maddest  gamblers an dystopian dreamers in our history, never say never.” Richard Seymour, of Lenin’s Tomb, agrees with that last sentence after explaining why he is not convinced that hig oil prices and the prospect of spreading chaos will be enough to convince the war mongers that they better think twice. “I’m not saying they’re going to do it, because how in the hell would I know, but can you  really put it past them?”

For the moment, I tend to side with Tom Engelhardt here, but only partially. The threat of war may be receding – just a little bit. And  this is no reason to sit back and just relax. A receding threat is still a threat, and it can start growing again any minute.

To prevent that – and make it as hard as possible for the US and Israelis leaderships to start this new war of aggression – peace movement people have to move, to act. The price that agressors have to pay must be driven even higher that the price of oil. How? By threatening turmoil in the streets. By mobilising for an explosion of protest – now. The war people should not be in any doubt that their law and their order will not be safe when they start lawlessly spreading diorder from the skies above Tehran.

Activists and their organisations should me make ait clear beyond any doubt: the fiirst bomb – either American or Israeli – on Iran, wil be answered by organised prorotest and resistence. They attack Iran? We will put every American or Israeli embassy, every American and Israeli consulate or other diplomatic mission, under a siege by demonstrators, as soon as the bombs start falling. And we will announce our intention to do so from now on, and start planning for such actions.

And we will take to the streets in every city of every  ally of the US and Israeli state. This obviously includes the country that I live in myself, the Netherlands, a state that is disgustingly loyal to the US empire. We should demand of the governments of these allies : no support for the US/Israeli war drive against Iran, whether through sanctions, or theruogh miltary, logistical or economic support to this next war. An attack on Iran is the start of a war of agression, in other words: a major war crime. We should not let them get their way.

Basially, it is sary, very scary. But it has its funny, even hilarious side as well. i am talking about the eonomy -an eonomy enteringa severe recession, if I interpret the signs correctly.

Some of those signs: stock exchanges are almost in free fall. London loses 2,49 % today; Frankfurt and Paris lose more than two % as well. Asia: same story basically. Hong Kong donw 4 %, Japan 2 %, China 2 % (BBC, 15 july). In Britain, talk is now of impending recession. Consumer prices have risen 3,8 %, the highest inflation rate since 1997. Inflation is expected to rise even higher, to above 4 %. This means that the Bank of England is not inclined to lower rates. Lowering rates – the way to make lending-for-investments cheaper – is what central banks are supposed to do to encourage economic activity. But it also tends to encourage inflationary tendencies. “Rate cuts are looking much less likely”,  accoording to Ross Walker, an economist connected to the Royal Bank of Scotland Group ( International Herald Tribune , 15 July).

The recession is connected to the crisis in the housing market. Cheap lending to encourage people to buy their own house hase gone wrong, when too many people could nog pay back what they borrowed. That meant people losing their homes through repossession; it also meant banks getting in trouble because they did not get their money back. In the marxist sense, this is a crisis of overproduction: an overproduction of credit, as it were. But credit is connected with all kinds of economic activity, one bank in trouble can pull down other companies. The crisis in the banking sector is flowng over into what looks like a rather serious recession.

What makes the world economy more vulnerable is the steep rise in oil prices. Last week, the price of a barrel of crude oil reached 147 dollar. This means a price rise of 50 % in 2008 alone. Car drivers are paying the price, transport costs are rising, peoplecan look forward to high heating bills coming  winter (Aljazeera, 12 july). The threat of general inflation will become even more serious this way.

Meanwhile, companies are reacting to economic trouble in a very familiar and very anti-social way. Siemens, for instance, the big automobile company in Germany. “Against the backdrop of a slowing economy, we have to become more efficient”,  according to Peter Loescher, Siemens CEO. and that is why Siemens will cut 16,750 jobs, out of the 400,000 jobs in that company (Aljazeera, 8 July). Making workers pay for an recession that is the product of an economy over which these same workers have no serious say. That is the answer from above, from the company directors and big shareholders, supported by governments. When will we see a big company trying to become ‘more efficient’ by seriously cutting back on shareholders’ profits en CEO salaries and bonuses?

This all is scary. It means more unemployment, more people in financial troubles, more people losing homes. That is already scary enough. It means that there will be a need for collective resistance, for radical left wing answers, left wing forces uniting workers and other disadvantaged people in solidarity against lay-offs, wage cuts and so on. These left wing forces, however, are weak in many places, almost non-existent in oiothers. This is even more scary than the recession itself. For, where people get desperate, and the left isn’t there to offer hope, the fascist right may begin to fill that void. We better get our act together.

However, let us not stop smiling when we find a reason to smile. For instance, when the US government acts forcefully to save two lending institiutions, Fannie Mae en Freddie mac, both deeply introubled because of the problems in credits in the housing sector. Th government plans to buy stocks in both companies and is ready to lend momey to these companies as well (Christian Science Monitor, 15 July).

This shows how hollow are the neoliberal claims of ‘let the market do it’s job, and let the government stay out of the economy’. The money that is not there when it is a matter of supporting poor people, is readily available when it ios  a metter of corporate needs. As soon as it is a matter of saving big companies and the whole financial sector from collapse, we don’t see much free market liberalism. Instead, we see massive state support going to big corpaorations. Let us smile about this irony-coupled-with-hypocrisy. We will need all good cheer we can get in the troubled times ahead.

The Biggest and Most Expensive Circus on Earth, also known as the American presidential election campaign, is upon us. And, by ‘us’, I mean all inhabitants of this tormented planet, not just the people of the United States themselves.

For that is the first thing I’d like to say on the presidential elections in the US: the one that will be selected to live in the White House is not just head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the US. He (the only she has lost the Democratic primaries) is in fact, world boss. If democratic principles would prevail, all citizens of the world should have the right to take part in this election. Something like this has had been suggested in 2004. Maybe every country should demand admission and ask to become a state within the United States – with the right to elect two Senators, a number of Representatives and to help elect the president…

This would, obviously, be too much democracy to be tolerated. So we will have to endure the elections as they are now, and that wil not be fun. For – and this is the second thing I’d like to say - in an race between a Democratic and a Republican candidate, the sad  thing is that they cannot both lose at the same time. For both deserve to lose. Both ar a threat to democratic rights, to the welfare of the majority, and to the remnants of peace in this world.

I will not insult my readers by taking much space explaining why McCain deserves to lose. He wants to continue the Iraq war endlessly. He threatens Iran with war. He walks in the footsteps of the Bush presidency. No more of that, please!

The other man, Barack Obama, has gained a deplorable amount of support from people on the Lleft. He does not deserve it, and that becomes clearer every week. He is refusing to block FISA, a piece of legislation that enables cooperation of big media in spying on people in America, and protects these corporations against lawsuits on that account. So much for privacy and civil rights. He basically blames black fathers for irrespioonsible behaviour towards their families – thereby going along with the racist sterotypes putting blame for poverty among black people on blacks, especially black men. So much for putting an end to racism. Het talks of withdrawing combat troops out of Iraq, but wants to keep a military force there: cambat troops number only half the American military force there. private contactors – or to use the proper term, mercenaries – may also be used under an Obama presidency, according to a Obama advisor. And Obama calls for more attention to other war fronts, especially Afganistan. A bit of de-escalation in Iraq, a bit of escalation in afghanistan, is that the best bargain for peace?! So much for ending war.

The vaguely progressive image thet Obama tried to promote in the primaries is fading quickly. And it’s not just a matter of moving to the center in order to win the elections. The problem goes much deeper that that. Every candidate that wants to become president through either the Democratic or the Republican party machinse, must be a defender of American capitalism, of the strong state that protects this capitalism. Every candidate, either Democratic or Republican, must be a promotor of empire and therefore an instigator of war. Being prepared to commit mass murder and other crimes usually goes with the (ambition for) job, as Arthur Silber explains, with only bits of exaggeration. 

Obama may talk have talked Left to gain his candidacy; but he has to act Right (which means, wrong) when he is president. And he has, again and again, to prove to the big corporations and their big media mouthpieces, that he is prepared to dump his left-leaning language and to be as brutal as his predecessors. Obama is not betraying his principles by turning to the center. he is paying obeisance to the true principles guiding both parties: fealty to corporate interest and to imperialist ambitions. Again, he does not deserve any left wing support.

Reading my two most recent pieces on this blog, one might think that I spent my time online mainly reading other weblogs. That is not quite true, there are, ofcourse, other kinds of sites I find useful ans visit frequently. Let me introduce a few of them. As this is a weblog for English-language readers, I will leave out websites in the language that I tend to use most often, which happens to be Dutch…

An absolute favourite is the online version of the radical magazine Counterpunch. Every day new articles way outsiede the mainstream, comments on forgotten aspets of the wars raging, the dismantling of civil liberties going on in the USA, repression and resistance in all kinds of coun tries. When there is something shocking happening – an shooting spree on a U.S. university, for instance, or a crisis around elections in Ukraine – besure to check this site. You will find articles thathelp you to make sense of those events.

The politics of the magazine are not that clear, not soe say inconsistent, often delightfully so. The irreverence of especially the editors, radical journalist Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, is a pleasure to behold. However, it has its downsides, as, for instance, when Cockbrun cannot resist the temptation to side with climate sceptics, apparently just out of a sense of mischief against what he considers a wrong-headed consensus. Also, the mixture of old-style conservative articles among the left wing ones is not what radical magaines are made for. The fact that some conservatives, out of isolationist motoves, dislike the wars of the Bush administration, and that they don’t like the imperial superstate that the neo-conservatives erect to wage those wars – these facts are no good reason to consider, for instance, the fans of dissident Republican Ron Paul in any sense true allies. Still, it makes for a surprising mix…

Another splendid website is Tomdispatch, with its subtitle: ’a regular antidote to the mainstream media’. Its maker, Tom Engelhardt, writes well-researched articels on the Iraq war and other episodes of the ‘War on Rerror’. He also publishes articles by a number of other relevant writers: Michael Klare on enery policies, oil etcetera; Nick Turse on the Pentagon, the military- industrial complex in shocking, sometimes also hilarious detail, and others. The articles are well-annotated and contain a wealth of leads for further research. People whoe regularly checked Tomdipatch in recent years will neither have been suprised by recent news about the US  planning tot stay in Iraq endlessly, nor by the fact that Big oil is preparing to return to the country. Tom Engelhardt and other writers of Tomdispatch can rightly say: we told you so, way back years ago. if you are not tegularly reading Tomdispatch, you do yourself a disservice.

Of course, I also look at regular more mainstream websites for news and background. I prefer Aljazeera and the BBC, and British newspapers like the Guardian. For an overview of relevant pieces, selected from a progressive perspective for progressive readers,  from the English-language press, I check Common Dreams. That saves me the effort of checking all the main British, American, Canadian, Australian newspapers myself on a daily basis… Yes, I am aware of the fact that I cannot blindly rely on such a pre-selected range, so I don’t. But my time is not unlimited.

Back to more radical sites. There are lots of them, some of thim linked to marxist organisations of left wing magaines. Socialist Worker (US), made by the International Socialist Organisation, has reorganised and restyled their website this spring, and the res7ult is impressive. Where it used to be a weekly magaine on-line, now there are daily additions. Not just news, but comments, background pieces, on the US elections, on class struggle in the U.S. and world wide, on all kinds of subjects relevant for a rebel like me, written from a similar rebellious Marxist perspective to my own ideas. Beautiful.

A different type of marxist site is the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). This is made by a Trotskyist group with, in my opinioon, rather narrow sectarian politics. The site, however, is useful indeed. They bring together information, usually based on reading the mainstream press, on conflicts and events all around the world, and combine that with Marxist analysis that basically makes sense – as long as you subtract or ignore the general conclusions which go like ‘build a socialist movement in OUR special way, there is no other salvation’…

There is, of course, much more. Maybe I will make it a habit of mine on this weblog to write a little piece like this or the wtoe latest ones, just to tell writers where my internet travel tends to take me, day in and day out. For now: enough.

A few more interesting weblogs that I visit quite often. First, there is Once Upon a Time, made by Arthur Silber, a man whose politics are on the libertarian  left. He’s a very angry man, and it shows, again and again, in venomous arguments against U.S. imperialism, its crimes and its accomplices. He clearly has not a shred of illusions in th Democratic Party as an alternative: both parties, Democratic and Republican, are the expression of corporate power and imperialist ambition. A lot of his anger is directed against liberal and moderately leftwing bloggers who still will not see that de Democrats are not opponents of war and empire, not even opportunistic collaborators who go along with war under pressure – no they are, basically, just as bad as the other party. I think he is right about that, in essence.

A subject that he returns to again and again is the drift to war with Iran. And sometimes his anger turns in an almost blind rage – not just against the powers-that-be, but against all those people who should be able to see the threat and oppose it, but somehow don’t do so. Here, he attacks the one  source of any possible alternative: ordinary people. And, however frustrating it may be to watch all this passivity in the  face of impending catastrophe – still, cursing those people from which any possible altenarive has to come enhances the islolation of the ones seeking such an alternative. Among which: Artur Siber himself. For, even though I think his picture of the level of protest and resistance against U.S. imperialism is too negative, hiw voice has to be heard and it has to be taken serously.

Chris Floyd is one of the few webloggers who sees this and who does so. His weblog Empire Burlesque, the second blog I like to mention here, frequently mentions newly posted articles on Once Upon a Time. Empire Burlesque has a somewhat lighter tone, but both the anger and the politics are very similar to Silber’s. Well-documented articlses on imereialist depredations fill a large part of the blog. Especially the somewhat lesser-knownfrontlines in the so-called War on Terror get extensive treatm,ent. If you are interested, for instance, in Somalia and what the U.S and its Ethiopoian collaborators/ vassals are doing to that tormented country, Empire Burlesque is one of the pleces to check.

Hist style of argumentation is different from that of Silber. Where tha latter takes one or two events or quotes, and then builts an extensive argumantation upon that base, Floyd reserves much more space for the quotes and facts, letting them almost speak for themselves. The methods are different; the disgust of what imerpialism is doing to humanity is very similar. Floyd has one advantage: he is clearly a Bob Dylan lover, as am I…

‘Tell me what books you read, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ That is the translation of a Dutch expression; I have no idea whether the same expression exist in the English language, but you get the idea. Reworked for the internet era, you get: tell me what websites you check regularly, what weblogs you like etcetera – and I’ll tell you who you are. So, let me tell you what websites  I like and check regularly. Then you can draw your own conclusions. Being a blogger, I’ll start with weblogs I like. Maybe I’ll write another piece around other kinds of favourite websites.

Everyday, basically, I take a look on Lenin’s Tomb, a beautiful blog from Britain made by ‘Lenin’ and a few others. ‘Lenin’ is the name that Richard Seymour uses on this blog; he is part of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) (UK), and not one of its worst parts either. He writes sharp articles on a broad range of subjects, but what he writes often has to do with the so-called War on Terror, its dynamics, ideological expression and justifications such as Islamophobia, its victims, and the resistance to the wars and the warmakers. A beautiful example is his recent article on Somalia and how Western imperialism helped destroy the country under the fig leaf of ‘humanitarian intervention’.

A different kind of Marxist is Lous Proyect, from the USA whose weblog is called ‘Unrepentant Marxist’. Proyect has been member of the Socialist Workers Party (USA, not to be confused wit the SWP in Britain). That used to be a Trotskyist organisation, but it degenerated into an sectarian group that mainly worshipped the Cuban revolution, the regime that came from that revolution, and similar regimes and movements. The group also developed rather nasty habits towards its membership and an authoritarian leadership style. So Proyect left. He is now active as an independent Marxist,and this weblog bears the both marks of his independence, as well as the scars of his past.

He writes on very different subjects. Often it’s about Marxist economic theory, and how to use it to explain recent events. Sometimes he comments on developments in or around Marxist groups, splits and conflicts in and around them. He often stresses how dangerous it can ben when small groups try to base themselves simplistically on Bolshevik experience during and after the Russian Revolution. No, he says, what these groups do is copying a caricature of Bolshevism, for which Zinoviev, leader of the Communist International in the early Twenties, bears a lot of responsibility. ‘Zinovievist’, he calls this phenomenon, and he does not like it at all. I think he overstates his case. However, having myself been active in a small Marxist group for almost twent years and having left under not very pleasant circumstances, I also think he has a point, and I recognise parts of my experience in his experience. That makes me feel quite at home as a reader of his blog.

Much weaker is Proyect in analysing recent revolutions. He evaluates the Venezuelan developments led by president Chavez – ‘the Bolivarian Revolution’- much more positively than I do. Criticisms that stress the need for a thourough revolution built from below, independently from the Chavez government and state, get dismissed as sectarian. Lous Proyect may have broken withthe organisational habits of the SWP (USA). But his rather positive attitude towards the Cuban and now the Venezuelan road to ’socialism’ shows that that his departure did nog mean a total political break. People who criticize the Cuban regime as state capitalist, and not at all socialist, get short shrift from Proyect, and I disagree with him here. He seems to have a political love/hate relationship with ‘Lenin’, from Lenin’s Tomb. ‘Here, I am with ‘Lenin’ and not with Proyect. However, it is very useful to have these kind of arguements, and his style of writing is sharp, clear, very readable.

And then, there is Louis Proyect  as a film critic. A large part of his weblog is filled with comments on recent movies. Now, I don’st follow the cinema that much, it’s just ot my thing. But Proyect’s articels on films are well worth checking, because he gives historical and political context from which one learns a lot. An example is his recent piece on a film about the Mongolian conqueror-emperor Gengiz Khan. He doesn’t just describe what the film is like; he gives a shoirt and beautiful introduction toe Medieval Mongol history and society, in whcih he effectivily debunks the ieda of Mongol society as just a matter of cruel conquest, and nothing more.

This post can grow much longer, for there are more beuatiful blogs that deserve attention. Some will get this attention – in a follow-up piece.

Well, who is making this weblog? Peter Storm, born in Arnhem, Netherlands, in 1961; living singly and gaily in Tilburg, in those same yet very much changed Netherlands. Studied in Utrecht, history, become politically active, mainly in and through the Internationale Socialisten, a Marxist organisation belonging to the International Socialist (IS) Tendency. From Spring 1988 until Februari this year i was a member. I am no longer, for reasons both political and personal that I will not go into now. Politically, I remain, and intend to remain, close to the core politics of the IS Tendency: revolutionary Marxist, anti-Stalinist (as if there cam be Marxism that is NOT thoroughly anti-Stalinist…). Perhaps I am somewhat more open for the best of the anarchist tradition than I have been during my IS years. And, hopefully, the learning process will not stop, not before the revolution and not after the revolution either…

I am a writer on politics, history, society, and how to change them in what i see as the right, that is a very much radical Left, direction. Most of this writing is for my Dutch-language blog, Rooieravotr. My other main activity is music, about which you can read more on another blog I make, also in Dutch.

The blog you are now reading has been neglected for too long. Its purpose will become clearer, both to readers and to myself, as I revive it further, in the coming weeks. I intend to write once or twice everye week. My Dutch-language blog Rooieravotr has priority, as far as writing is concerned, but – especially in this US election year – som red rebel rantings in English are not out of place…

Silence has ruled here much too long, and it is annoying me. So it is time to revive this weblog. Coming soon: a small piece about myself and what I am doing here, a piece on some weblogs I like, an article on the American presidential elections, and, hopefully, more…

This piece hads already been on this blog, but, through a mistake of mine, it got deleted. So I copied it back from the Unityblog (Socialist Worker- New Zealand) which had copied from me back then… Unfortunately, the links in the original got lost, and i haven’t got the inclination to remake them as new. However, for the sake of completness, here is part 7, in somahat diminished form, again…

Evaluating the Venezuelan process known as “Bolivarian Revolution”, I argued that several of 20th century proletarian revolutions were much more radical, went much deeper, than the Venezuela events up to now (part 5 of this series); I also tried to show that there have been much more important turning points for the Left than the unfolding reforms in Venezuela (part 6). Now, I want to turn to the events themselves, and the way Socialist Worker – New Zealand’s May Day Statement evaluates them.
We read in that Statement: “There is, at present, a dual power situation in Venezuela where opposing class forces are ‘balanced out’.” There are two “class coalitions” which have to fight it out. Presumably, one of the coalitions consists of Chavez and his supporters, both in government and Congress, and in the various mass organisations, Missiones, communal councuils. The other constists, we may assume, of big business and the parts of the state that are controlled by the right wing opposition (a number of state governors, for instance).
Now, this seems to me wrongheaded. The state as such still is organised top-down, in a bureaucratic fashion. The whole structure is imbedded in a capitalist economy. The fact that Chavez trties to use the parts of the state that he controls to enact reforms that improbve poor people’s lives is encouraging and should be supported. But this is radical social democracy in action within existing structures. It is not opposing workers’power from below to the structures of capitalist state and economic power.
Yes, there are the communal councils, built in a radical fashion, partly from below. Yes, there are the missiones. But these programmes to enact radical improvements in health, education and housing are funded through parts of the central state which spends its oil profits on these reforms. That is all, of course, most welcome.
But, however much the people involved at the bottom are encouraged to co-manage the execution of the programmes, ist is still the centre that initiates them, funds them, and controls the outlines. Again, this is radical social democracy in action. A class coalition of workers and peasants, acting independently against another coalition of capitalists, landowners and their state is something else again. What we see in Venezuela is a progressive reform coalition, acting both within and alongside the existing state structures, but in general not against them.
Yes, within that reform coalition there are pressures to act more independently, to radicalize the process, to escalate the process from below, in the direction of real revolutionary change. These pressures could grow, and that is an exciting prospect. That could lead to a dynamics in the direction of dual power, with workers’and peasants organisations confronting capitalist power. But it is misleading to say that what could hopefully evolve in the future , already exists in fact.
That a large numer of Veneuelans are actively involved in the process, as the Statement claims, is true. That millions of people voted for Chavez on an openly socialist programme is a fact. But mass involvement in a radical reform movement does not, in itself, mean that we have a revolution unfolding. That would only be the case if the mass movement was acting independently, on an ongoing basis.
Eruptions of independent mass struggles – as for instance the giant revolt that defeated the April 2002 coup and brought Chavez back to power – show that the potential for revolution exists. But these are episodes; the process as such still depends largely on the structures around Chavez’ leadership, with the direction and impetus coming from the top down. Tha quantity of mass involvement is immense; but the independent quality of that involvement still seems rather limited to me.
It is striking how much the statement stresses the “positive initiatives of the leadership”. Yes, Chavez praises Trotsky and talks about a radical, democratic, non-bureaucratic socialism. That is positive. But, to judge a process, we should not start with what the leadership of that process says. There often is a big diffenrence between what leaders think they are doing, and what they actually do. And what they actually do should not primarily be expolained by their own ideas, but by analysing the situation in its totality.
Here, it must be said that much of what Chavez is saying is probably entirely sincere – but also mostly rhetoric. With all the talk of socialism, capitalism is doing quite splendidly in Venezuela at the moment. Profits are high, and the state is quite willing to negotiate with big capital. Banks, for instance,are making tremendous profits in Venezuela.
Worker-managed enterprises, cooperatives, communal councilsm missiones – they all exist and show embryonically an alternative way of running society. But they exist alongside capitalist firms which still control the bulk of the economy. And the leadership, with all its socialist talk, seems quite willing to tolerate that situation.
The taking over of factories by workers almost alway involved factories abandoned or bankrupted under the owners – not the factories run y them in a profitable way. Peasants are allowed, sometimes encouraged, to take over landlords’ territories – but almost always it involves unused lands, or lands for which the landlords don’t have legal ownership documents. Serious encroachments on capitalist properties by workers and peasants are very rare. The socialist revolution in Venezuela has, in an economic sense, still to begin.
The Statement mentions a number of measures under the heading “Challenging the market”. There is the nationalisation of oil, telecom and power. There is the redistribution of oil wealth thropugh the missiones.There are minimum wage increases. There are measures against tax evasion by the rich. There are maximum prices of food. And there are moves to end the independence of the Central Bank.
Al these things are positive reforms. But do are they truly “challenging the rule of capital” as the Statement says? I think rather not. The nationalisations are an example. If succesful, they transfer the power over companies from private companies to the state. This was quite common in Western Europe after World War II. As long as the state companies are run by government bureaucrats to make a profit for the state, the rule of capital is not challenged, only restructured.
And in Venezuela “nationalisation” often even did not go that far. What happened is usually that the state took over oil installations in order to force the oil companies to re-negotiate the amount of profits they could keep and the royalties that went to the state. This shifted resources to the state, but it did not break the power of capital. And when the state takes really over a company, compensation is paid. The capitalist loses the company but not his financial power to buy another one. Again, I don’t see much challenge to the rule of capital here.
Then, the redistribution of oil wealth through the misiones. This does not, as such, break capitalist power. It is what social democrats used to do when they were still both more or less social and democrats (i.e. long before New Labour, before the Third Way). And the mechanism depends on making those oil profits. It is redistribution within capitaslism and depending on a flourishing capitalism. Overthrowing capitalism is something else.
Increasing the minimum wage is a beautiful thing. It happens in all kinds of countries, sometimes in the United States. There is nothing especially anti-capitalist about it. The right wing trade union, party of the opposition coalition, reacted to this years increase by demanding an even bigger one.
And stopping the rich in their efforts to evade taxes makes sense, even within capitalism. Any capitalist state sometimes clashes with individual capitalists, for instance around taxation. One of the roles of such a stateconsist of enforcing the general interests of capital – against workers’challenges but also against individual capitalists. Again, no challenge to the market, only enforcing capitalist rules amongst themselves.
Price regulations of foodstuff are indeed limiting the making of profit. But, as long as there is no social – i.e. workers – control of production itself, price controls will be weak and very hard to enforce.
Bringing the Central Bank under control limits the independent power of this crucial capitalist intitution. But as long as that controil shifts to the goverment, to Chavez, there is a shift within capitalist power, no break with that power.
Let us remember that the United Kingdom only introduced the independent position under Tony Blair! Before that – i e. under Toriy goverments like the ones of John Major and Margaret Thatcher – that independence was limited. Was there a “challenge to capital” in existence – or only a remnant of a different way of running capitalism?
There is much more to be said about the Venezuelan events, and the much too positive evaluation that Socialist Worker -New Zealand makes of them. The formation and building of the United Socialist of Venezuela (PSUV) – initiated by Chavez – is a case in point. With that, I conclude this series.
The Statement explained that the building is done “from below”. An interview with Orlando Chirino, published on the website of International Socialism Journal, sheds some light on what actually is going on. It appears from his words that the pressure to accept Chavez’ model of socialism is quite strong. And that model accepts a role of private and even multinational capital, even sees some of them as partners, is not enthousiastic about expropriating capitalist enterprises in important sectors.
Also, Chavez seems to want to bring the left wing trade union federation UNT within the party, a rather dangerous thing to do. Orlando Chirino, one of the leaders within the UNT, asks worriedly: “Will all PSUV members beobliged to support the decisions of the goverment and its bureaucrats? Will the new party become more than just an appendage of goverment?”
A critical perspective, such as that brought forward by Chirino, is essential. That applies not just to the PSUV; it applies to the whole Venezuelan reform process as well. An important development it truly is; and it deserves our full, but always critical, solidarity against the right in Venezuela and against Western imperialism. But the center of the universe for socialists it certainly should not be.

Recently, I wrote a series on the meaning and relevance of the Venezuelan reform proces instigated under president Chavez, events known as the Bolivarian Revolution. This series was a reaction to the May Day Statement published by Socialist Worker – New Zealand. My series has also been posted on their blog. On the request of Socialist Worker – New Zealand, and for the sake of discussion and exchange of opinion, I publish the May Day Statement here as well.

Peter Storm

Venezuela’s deepening revolution & international socialist coordination

Central committee   of Socialist Worker – New Zealand

1May 2007

This May Day statement by the central committee of Socialist Worker-New Zealand takes up an invitation from Alex Callinicos, a leader of the British Socialist Workers Party, to respond to his proposal (27 September 2006) that the International Socialist Tendency (IST) adopt a new “Coordination” structure.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand has been an affiliate of the IST since 1995. We believe that the question of an IST Coordination demands that the whole IST first comes to a consensus on the global political context and critical global tasks of the IST, since questions of organisation and politics cannot be separated.

GLOBAL POLITICAL CONTEXT

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes that key elements of the global political context include:

• Huge turmoil and rivalries within global imperialism, which is driving the US state’s global war to maintain its position relative to rival powers, chiefly China, the European Union and Russia.

• The weakening of the US state’s ability to assert its will by military force as a result of the heroic resistance of Iraqi people to the imperialist occupation of their country.

• Massive grassroots opposition around the world to the Iraq war, which in some countries has seen large anti-war movements emerge. If Iran is attacked, there will likely be an explosion of the anti-war movement onto the streets.

• Heightened grassroots concern about planetary environmental chaos, due to the climate change issue “bursting through” into the mainstream.

• Neo-liberalism facing growing political opposition, which is currently the most advanced across Latin America.

• Signs of rising worker unrest and unionisation across some countries.

• The deepening revolutionary process in Venezuela, marked by the “left turn” of Hugo Chavez in parallel with his re-election as president on 3 December 2006.

VENEZUELA’S REVOLUTION IS GLOBALLY SIGNIFICANT

Socialist Worker-New Zealand regards the unfolding revolution in Venezuela as of epochal significance.

With the US military bogged down in Iraq, there is more space for Venezuela’s socialist Chavistas to seriously challenge capitalism right on Washington’s doorstep.

This challenge has profound implications for the world’s socialists. The deepening revolution in Venezuela is an historic opportunity for socialists everywhere to spotlight a real-life alternative to capitalism’s inequality, eco-chaos and war.

Is the unfolding Venezuelan revolution the most important leap forward for the workers’ cause since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution? The answer from delegates at Socialist Worker-New Zealand’s recent national conference was a unanimous “yes”.

The masses in Venezuela are behind a genuine revolutionary project in a way that has not occurred in the last 90 years. While nothing is certain, this could well create the mass impetus for a huge revival in the international revolutionary socialist movement.

It is the world historic significance of events in Venezuela, and the implications for IST coordination and direction, that is the focus of this Socialist Worker-New Zealand statement.

POLITICAL SITUATION IN VENEZUELA

Socialist Worker-New Zealand offers this summary analysis of the political situation in Venezuela:

• There is, at present, a dual power scenario in Venezuela where opposing class forces are “balanced out”. While this state of affairs has lasted for quite a while, it is inherently unstable and cannot last forever. Either one class coalition or the other will win the war over whether Venezuela will move beyond capitalism to socialism. In this war the impact of global events will play a pivotal role, since the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union in the 1920s showed that “socialism in one country” cannot forever withstand the pressures of world capitalism.

• A huge proportion of Venezuela’s population are actively involved in the revolutionary process. The role of the grassroots masses was decisive in beating back the right-wing military coup of 2002 and restoring the elected Chavista government. In the presidential election of December 2006 Hugo Chavez, who campaigned on an openly socialist platform, received 63% of the vote (7.3 million people). Over the week before polling day, 2.5 million people in Caracas, half the capital’s entire population, took to the streets to support Chavez against counter-revolutionary provocations.

• The masses and the leaders of the Bolivarian Revolution are having to confront fundamental issues about what socialism is and how it can be won. In particular, the question of state power is being debated on a mass scale: Can the existing capitalist state be bent to a new popular will? Or must new organs of grassroots power be created to confront the pro-capitalist bureaucracy and the economic power of the capitalist class? Increasingly the answer is being seen in the practical construction of alternative structures of popular power.

POSITIVE INITIATIVES FROM THE LEADERSHIP

Chavez & Co, who are the established leaders of the revolution, have learnt a lot since the former army officer was first elected president in 1998. Crucially they have learnt from the actions of the masses of people, who in turn have been inspired by Chavista leaders who are calling for “socialism in the 21st century”.

Both the leadership and the masses have learnt by having to counter the military coups, economic sabotage and propaganda warfare of pro-capitalist forces. When you are engaged in open battle, you either learn very quickly or you lose.

Early in 2005 Chavez spoke of how he had once believed in a “third way”, which he described as trying to “put a mask” on the capitalist beast, but this had been “smashed by reality” and he was now a socialist. Over the last six months Chavez has moved further towards revolutionary conclusions, calling himself a Trotskyist and proclaiming “permanent revolution”. He has made repeated calls for the “dismantling of the bourgeois state” in order to build socialism in Venezuela.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand recognises the very positive initiatives coming from Chavez & Co to push beyond dual power towards socialism. Chavez calls this process a “revolution within the revolution”. These initiatives include:

COMMUNAL COUNCILS
The expansion of communal councils (currently numbering 19,000) across all of Venezuela is encouraging mass participatory democracy and drawing more grassroots people into the revolutionary process.

The communal councils are a positive move to empower the urban poor — the casualised workers and petty traders in the cities who make up over half of Venezuela’s total population. While these councils are not the same as the workers’ soviets of 1917 Russia, they are vital in a land where the majority of people live in cities but do not have permanent jobs, let alone belong to unions.

The communal councils possibly have more in common with the poor peasants’ committees which the Bolsheviks tried (but failed) to establish as an emancipatory vehicle for Russia’s masses of rural workers and poor peasants. The big difference is that the Bolsheviks’ poor peasants committees’ were set up in the countryside, where their dispersal over huge areas made them unequal to the pressures of class enemies, while the Chavistas’ communal councils have arisen in the cities, where a mass concentration of the urban poor and their proximity to organised workers gives them every chance of displacing capitalism’s organs of political power.

SOCIAL MISSIONS

The popular social missions, directly funded by nationalised oil revenues, have been improving the living conditions of Venezuela’s poor.

And the education, health, social welfare and co-operative missions, all relying on armies of volunteers, have begun to establish new lines of power. Chavez put it this way in June 2006:

“The social missions became the instruments of constructing socialism. But they are not socialism itself. They are weapons in the construction of socialism, aimed to include everybody, to establish and to practice equality.”

CHALLENGING THE MARKETVenezuela remains a capitalist economy, and capital is still flowing into the country seeking profits. But the Chavez government has introduced measures that are challenging the rule of capital. These include:

• Pushing forward with the nationalisation of oil processing, as well as the planned nationalisation of telecom and power companies.
• Government redistribution of wealth from state-owned oil to the poor of Venezuela.
  Major increases in the minimum wage.
• Tightening up tax regulations so the rich cannot evade taxes.
• Imposition of maximum prices for basic foodstuffs.
• Moves to repeal the independence of Venezuela’s neo-liberal Central Bank.

UNITED SOCIALIST PARTY OF VENEZUELATo move beyond dual power towards socialism demands a mass socialist party that educates, unites and organises grassroots people around the struggle for liberation from below.

Chavez sparked the formation of a United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he compares to Lenin’s Bolshevik Party.

The process of forming this “combat party” is already sharpening the differences between revolutionaries and reformists, which had been submerged by the previous ill-defined grouping of parties “supporting” Chavez. Those parties have all been given the option of either dissolving into the new mass socialist party or remaining outside the Chavista government.

It would be utopian to think that the PSUV could be an instantly homogenous party of revolutionaries. It will, however, be a mass socialist party with organic connections to grassroots people who support the unfolding revolution. The process of building the PSUV will challenge the reformist wing of the Bolivarian movement and precipitate a “battle of ideas” in which the masses will participate.

While the initiative for the PSUV came from Chavez, it will be built “from below”. Socialist militants, who played a key role in mobilising the Chavista vote during the 2006 presidential election, have become the “promoters” of the new mass socialist party. They are going out to the people to register members, who will be organised into “socialist battalions” of 200 people each. The aim is to organise 20,000 of these “battalions” across Venezuela, from which delegates will be elected to attend the PSUV’s founding conference in August 2007.

The conference will run for three or more months, with regular breaks so that delegates can return to their own “battalion” to discuss proposals and come back with a refreshed mandate from below.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes the PSUV is vital to educate, unite and organise the grassroots masses in Venezuela so they can push forward the socialist revolution.

Just as Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes all revolutionaries inside Venezuela need to join this mass socialist party, so too we believe that revolutionary groups in other countries need to establish comradely relations with the PSUV.

In combination, the communal councils, social missions, challenges to the market, formation of the PSUV and other emancipatory initiatives by Chavez & Co form a transitional mechanism by which the grassroots people of Venezuela can move towards the socialist defeat of counter-revolutionary forces. Trotsky’s transitional programme lives on inside Venezuela as the concept of liberation from below gains concrete mass form.

A WEAKNESS IN THE REVOLUTION

The future of Venezuela’s unfolding revolution is closely linked to the growth and mobilisation of unionised workers, who at present are only a tiny number compared to city-based casualised workers and petty traders, easily the biggest population groups in the country.

The small scale of Venezuela’s unionised workers is a weakness in the revolution that cannot be easily overcome. This weakness is compounded by a debilitating political split in the major union centre, the National Union of Workers (UNT). These social and political factors are hindering organised workers from speeding up the revolutionary process.

This weakness is recognised by the Chavista government. Chavez has often spoken of the need for the UNT and the organised workers to take a leading role in the revolution. Workers have been encouraged to take control of factories and create workers’ councils. Some small but positive advances in this direction have been taken.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes that the PSUV will be crucial to pulling unionised workers into the forefront of the revolution. That was certainly the role Lenin’s Bolsheviks played among the small sector of unionised workers in pre-revolutionary Russia.

ENGAGEMENT WITH THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION

While Chavez & Co started from a radical reformist viewpoint, the unfolding class struggle has pushed them towards a socialist perspective which is now assuming ever-sharper mass revolutionary features.

Obviously nobody can say for sure whether the Venezuelan revolution will win out. But right ow Chavez & Co are moving in a consistently socialist direction as they seek to overcome capitalism. In the process, they are confronting many problems unique to Venezuela and thus coming up with solutions not seen before in socialist history, such as the major role of communal councils in a land where far more city dwellers work in the “informal” economy than in corporate or state entities.

Venezuela’s unfolding revolution is drawing massive support from grassroots people across Latin America, which is fueling a continental revolt against neo-liberal economics and US imperial domination. In Ecuador and Bolivia, presidents have recently been elected on the back of explicitly socialist challenges to corporate rule.

These are exciting times. Socialism is being seriously talked about and acted upon by millions of people inspired by Chavez and the “revolution within the revolution” in Venezuela.

Socialists worldwide should be enthusiastic about the Bolivarian Revolution. Socialists worldwide need to engage with the revolution’s leaders, who will be in the PSUV, so there can be a reciprocity of ideas that promotes the global struggle for grassroots self-emancipation. Thus Socialist Worker-New Zealand is looking to forge practical links with our PSUV comrades in a land where socialism is well on the way to becoming a determining force.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand and a broad range of other leftists have formed the Venezuela Aotearoa Solidarity Team (VAST). We want to bring awareness of Venezuela’s revolution to the working class in this country. We want to build a solidarity coalition able to effectively oppose any intervention in Venezuela by the US state and its foreign allies.

In our socialist work in broad coalitions, such as the anti-war, anti-Islamophobic and climate change movements, we are pointing to Venezuela as a positive alternative to imperialism, oppression and eco-meltdown.

ALEX’S PROPOSALS FOR IST COORDINATION

It is within the context of the deepening revolution in Venezuela that Socialist Worker-New Zealand responds to Alex Callinicos’s proposal to create an IST “Coordination”. Alex defines such a Coordination as consisting of “selected organisations” whose leaderships would consult and meet between annual IST gatherings “to deal with initiatives, problems, etc”.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand has two substantive concerns with this Coordination proposal. First, it is not intimately linked to the global political situation, and in particular to how the IST needs to engage with the mass revolutionary process in Venezuela. Instead, the proposal is couched in terms of the IST’s own internal processes.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes the unfolding Venezuelan revolution, if it continues to move in the direction it’s currently going, will reshape the socialist and labour movements in every country on every continent, just as the unfolding Bolshevik revolution did from 1917-24. Therefore, rather than looking inwards, the IST needs to be focused outwards towards the most advanced revolutionary upsurge in 90 years and the global socialist regroupments it will inevitably set into motion.

At present, there seem to be real differences between IST affiliates over the nature of what is happening in Venezuela. At one end of the IST spectrum, Socialist Worker-New Zealand see Chavez & Co as being at the centre of the most important “revolution in the revolution” since the Bolsheviks proclaimed “All power to the Soviets” in 1917 Russia. At the other end of the IST spectrum, the Venezuelan revolution was a “non-topic” in the official discussion bulletins of the British Socialist Workers Party in the lead-up to their national conference in January 2007.

So how do we form an IST Coordination when the IST appears to lack real political coordination over the key strategic issue of Venezuela’s revolution? If we were to do it just on the basis of IST tactical organisation, any such IST Coordination would be a sham from the outset.

The deepening Venezuelan revolution has sparked intense discussions among the world’s different Marxist organisations about what makes a revolution, how to move towards socialism, what is the dialectic between the leaders and the masses, how to establish workers’ control and other strategic questions.

We all have a lot to learn from the world historic events in Venezuela. We cannot assume that any one Marxist group has readymade answers to everything. Any IST Coordination, therefore, must be based on facilitating this global debate among all Marxist groups, most of them outside the IST, in tandem with fusing the IST into a strategic engagement with the PSUV’s leaders.

It’s a global debate about the Venezuelan revolution that the IST needs to start coordinating, and that requires democratic input from all IST affiliates around the world.

That brings us to our second substantive concern. The IST Coordination proposal calls for unspecified powers to be granted to “selected” organisations. Any such “selection” would leave non-selected IST groups on the margins of IST decision-making, given the tyranny of distance over a global coalition like the IST. It would fix the bureaucratic curse of the initiating “centre” and the non-initiating “periphery” onto the IST.

Why can’t every IST affiliate have one representative on the IST Coordination? With modern communications technology, face-to-face meetings in London can be replaced by extremely cheap “virtual” meetings that link all continents. The material basis already exists for an all-in IST Coordination that interacts on a global scale as frequently as needed. The real question is whether the IST has the political consensus and the political will to bring it about.

SOCIALIST WORKER-NEW ZEALAND’S PROPOSALS

In the opinion of Socialist Worker-New Zealand, it is urgent and critical for the IST to relate to the revolutionary process in Venezuela and the opportunities it is creating for socialists worldwide.

To move in this direction, Socialist Worker-New Zealand makes three concrete proposals:

(1) As many Spanish-speaking IST comrades as possible to attend the three-month founding conference of the PSUV starting in August 2007.

(2) In consultation with PSUV leaders and Marxists from other countries attending the PSUV conference, the Spanish-speaking IST attendees to initiate a global debate about the nature, strategies and prospects of the Venezuelan revolution.

(3) To help coordinate this global debate about the Venezuelan revolution, an IST Coordination be created consisting of one delegate from every IST group and relying on modern technology to hold all-in “virtual” meetings as required.

FOUNDATIONS FOR MASS SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL

The failure of US forces in Iraq has opened up more space for the world’s socialists to operate. In Venezuela, for the first time since Lenin’s Bolsheviks, we are seeing a mass movement well on the way towards establishing socialism within the borders of a whole country. The front line of the epochal war between capitalism and socialism is now in Venezuela.

Even where there has been resistance to the neo-liberal offensive over the last two decades, the international workers’ movement has been floundering on the widespread assumption that “there is no alternative”. The Venezuelan revolution is putting socialism back on the agenda in a practical and living way — the way most people will come to socialism. The IST must be an organic part of this process.

Any IST Coordination needs to be focused on relating to forces outside the IST. That’s because the forward movement of the Venezuelan revolution and the wider Latin American uprisings look likely to provide the essential material foundations for a positive regroupment of the socialist and radical left on every continent, and the parallel emergence of a mass socialist international.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand believes the political and organisational decisions made within the IST must reflect this historic opportunity to move towards a mass socialist international. This is the first time since the early days of the Comintern that such a possibility has existed.

This requires the IST to directly engage with PSUV leaders in the building of a mass socialist international. The IST can play a positive role in this process if we make that turn now.

Socialist Worker-New Zealand invites feedback from IST affiliates and other socialist organisations. Please send your comments to:

Central committee, Socialist Worker-New Zealand, PO Box 13-685,Auckland, New Zealand.

socialist-worker@pl.net

+64 9 634 3984

Solidarity,

Central committee of Socialist Worker-New Zealand

SIGNED BY

• Don Archer
• Grant Brookes
• Joe Carolan
• Gordon Farris
• Vaughan Gunson
• Bernie Hornfeck
• Peter Hughes
• Daphne Lawless
• Grant Morgan
• Len Parker
• Tony Snelling-Berg