Leon Trotsky Says ‘Yes’ to Constitutional Reform

Leon Trotsky Says “Yes” to Constitutional Reform — Last-Minute Trotsky Announcement Before the Dec. 2 Referendum in Venezuela

by Celia Hart

We would be the trilling of birds, the best of us,
And be much less self-centered
— Silvio Rodriguez

This article, translated for Labor Standard by George Saunders, was originally posted on Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007, on the Venezuelan web site www.aporrea.org under the title “León Trotsky dice SI a las Reformas Constitucionales—Aviso trotsko de última hora antes del referendo sobre la Reforma Constitucional.”

Caracas, Day Zero.
I have the honor (undeserved as always) to be at this exact moment, during these decisive hours, in this place that is the future of the world.

Caracas is aflame with its own colors. The sky is bluer with the beginning of December, and the days pass slowly, full of magical predictions, as if we were watching “The Era giving birth to the Heart,” as Silvio Rodriguez says in one of his songs.

And so it is: the Era is giving birth to the Heart. A genuine heart, an extra one, for this little bit of a world that is so small and round and at the point of bursting.

We dressed in the color of blood yesterday in Caracas [in the mass mobilization of an estimated one million people demonstrating for the “Yes” vote]. For us “foreigners” who joined in the March for “Yes” it was as if God was about to do a replay on how the universe was made.

It was the March for “Yes,” in which the best men and women of humanity were grouped together. Yesterday, as part of this mass gathering—and I could not ask for more—there was Fidel! [Translator’s Note: Fidel’s “Reflection” of Nov. 29 about Venezuela was read to the crowd by President Hugo Chávez.] Here in Caracas is the best place for my invincible Comandante to be! This is the best place for listening to him! Here is the best place for him to keep on fighting! And the same goes for José Martí with his verses, “Together with the poor of the earth/ I wish to share my fate.” And the same for Silvio Rodriguez, who calls on us to be the best, “who would be the trilling of birds/, and with this trilling the sun already shines brighter.”

Caracas is reproducing the best days of the epic of Havana in the 1960s. But is there time for us to describe how this redness and this relevance filtered into our veins? Why is it that, as always happens when we must decide the color of the sky, each minute for us turns into a year?

The purpose of this hurried note is to declare that the Trotskyists of the world, those who deserve to be taken into account, are FOR the “Yes” vote. This time we are not going to allow ourselves to be separated from the revolution, as happened on many sad occasions.

Leon Trotsky says “Yes.” And this needs to be known by all the workers of Venezuela who aspire to a world where capital no longer rules, but rather a world ruled by labor and by love.

We say “Yes” because all the hope that remains for humanity is concentrated in the miraculous letters of this word “Yes.”

We say “Yes” because Trotsky took the Winter Palace, declaring “All Power to the Soviets,” saying “Yes” to that.

We say “Yes” because Joseph Stalin and those who trailed after him have been reduced to ashes, relegated to the dustbin of history, and are no longer able to prevent social justice and genuine democracy from escaping out of their grasp.

We say “Yes” because present at one and the same time within these reforms, which are being transformed into revolution, are both the “April Theses” [of Lenin] and Trotsky’s concept of Permanent Revolution.

We say “Yes” because we have saved time and money for Rosa Luxemburg, with the distinction she made between reform and revolution. Here in Venezuela reform is being converted into revolution and vice versa.

The workers whose vote now represents the world revolution say “Yes,” and if they didn’t say it, the world would be left without revolution.

James Petras doesn’t know anything about what is going on in the souls of the workers—the real workers!—of Venezuela.

That is why in this last-minute announcement we are saying “Yes.” It must be “Yes” in order to keep working for the socialist revolution. It must be “Yes” so that Leon Trotsky will not become an indecipherable name or an esoteric artifact.

The time for weeping (or regrets) is finished for us. Orlando Chirino no longer represents the actual workers in this country. He has handed a blank check to the opposition. (See the statement he signed, on Nov. 27, 2007, entitled “On Dec. 2 We Reject the Constitutional Reform. Vote to Abstain.”)

Even worse, he has handed a blank check to those with a nostalgia for Stalinism who still remain inside the Venezuelan revolutionary process and who, after the “Yes” vote, will certainly remain to be swept aside so that the Trotskyists and all the revolutionaries will have their rendezvous with history.

I have talked with workers here to the point of exhaustion, including with comrades at the Ministry of Labor when we were commemorating [on August 20, 2007] the sad anniversary of the assassination of Trotsky, and all of them are for the “Yes” vote and all of them are active members of the PSUV.

Neither Chirino nor the bureaucracy will stop them from participating in this permanent revolution, which belongs to all of us.

We are all here:

Including ever-so-beautiful France, where, as Marx said, everything is rising up—and tends to be carried to its ultimate consequences. There where the railroad workers have paralyzed the country. The Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire [French section of the Fourth International], which embodies the country’s best traditions, which embodies the Paris Commune of Louise Michel; also the France of May 1968; the land of the young people who are rebelling again in the banlieux [ghetto-type impoverished suburbs of the French cities]—all of them are shouting “Yes.”

Also here [in Caracas] are the hopes represented by the PSOL, the Party of Socialism and Liberty, of green Brazil, where they want to privatize what’s left of the Amazon, which really belongs to everyone. The best Brazilians, the most committed, are shouting “Yes.”

And Argentina is here in these moments, the land of 30,000 “disappeared,” and is represented by the MST (Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores—Socialist Workers Movement), saying “Yes” for the reform of the constitution.

And above all, the Argentina of Che Guevara is here, pronouncing in favor of the “Yes” vote.

Lastly, Cuba is here, where we find that the revolution is unending; where Che performed his best labors; where Leon Trotsky, without asking permission, has brought it about that the revolution does not stop even when Fukuyama declares “the end of history.” This Cuba of Fidel in his olive green uniform is shouting “Yes.”

Latin America, Europe, North America, with its antiwar movement and its movement of exploited immigrants—all are shouting “Yes.”

Leon Trotsky is saying “Yes” to the constitutional reforms of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Comrades of Venezuela, we are at the hour of decision and that alone makes it necessary to see the light.

As the Marea Socialista says—[that is, the Socialist and Class-Struggle Wave, which is] the majority section of the main current in the Venezuelan labor movement, the C-CURA (Corriente clasista unida revolucionaria y autonomna, or United Class-Struggle Revolutionary and Autonomous Current)—“It is necessary that we vote ‘Yes.’”

Venezuela, the best Venezuela, that of the workers, is speaking in the name of the whole world, and it is saying “Yes!”

Socialismo o Muerte (Socialism or Death)

Hasta la Victoria (Ever Onward to Victory)

Venceremos (We Will Win)

Dec. 1, 2007