For a “Yes”
Vote in Venezuela
by
Celia Hart has made it clear in her
article, “Bolivarians, You Have a World to Defend”
(posted elsewhere on this web site), why she thinks a “yes” vote on Dec. 2,
2007, will be a further step toward socialist revolution in Venezuela. I tend
to agree with her. Information giving support to that position may be found in
an article by three Trotskyists in
An article by James Petras, posted Nov. 28 on the CounterPunch
web site, gives further support to
the position for a “yes” vote. Petras’s article is
entitled “CIA
The following passages from Petras’s article are, to me, particularly persuasive that the call for a “yes” vote has class-struggle and revolutionary implications:
“In a speech to pro-Chávez, pro-amendment nationalist business-people
(Entrepreneurs for
“The reason for the popular majority is found in a few of the key amendments: One article expedites land expropriation facilitating re-distribution to the landless and small producers. Chávez has already settled over 150,000 landless workers on 2 million acres of land. Another amendment provides universal social security coverage for the entire informal sector (street sellers, domestic workers, self-employed) amounting to 40 percent of the labor force. Organized and unorganized workers' workweek will be reduced from 40 to 36 hours a week (Monday to Friday noon) with no reduction in pay [emphasis added]. Open admission and universal free higher education will open greater educational opportunities for lower class students. Amendments will allow the government to bypass current bureaucratic blockage of the socialization of strategic industries, thus creating greater employment and lower utility costs. Most important, an amendment will increase the power and budget of neighborhood councils to legislate and invest in their communities.
“The electorate supporting the constitutional amendments is voting in favor of their socio-economic and class interests; the issue of extended reelection of the President is not high on their [list of] priorities: [Yet] that is the issue the Right has focused on in calling Chávez a ‘dictator’ and the referendum a ‘coup.’”
Aside from these positive passages in Petras’s article, however, he also gives an incorrect
impression on one aspect of the situation in
Petras cannot be unaware that such Trotskyist figures
as Celia Hart and Alan Woods have been campaigning in Venezuela and
internationally for the “yes” vote and against Chávez’s
former ally, Gen. Raúl Baduel,
who is calling for a “no” vote, and Baduel’s ally,
the German-Mexican professor and sometime Chávez
adviser Heinz Dieterich.
(See the five articles by Celia Hart and Alan Woods against Baduel and Dieterich on the web
site <http://www.marxist.com>.
Celia’s articles also appeared on the Madrid-based web site www.rebelion.org,
where Petras’s articles often appear in Spanish as
well, and the Venezuelan web site www.aporrea.org.)
On Nov. 28, Celia Hart posted another long article (in Spanish only)
campaigning for a “yes” vote and, among other things, denouncing the king of
In the Venezuelan union movement, there are numerous different left factions, often in rivalry with one another, as can be seen from the article mentioned above titled “Chávez threatens to destroy the bourgeoisie.”
One wing of the generally pro-Chávez labor federation (the UNT) is led by Stalin Peres Borges, who is also a leader of the (Trotskyist) Party of Revolution and Socialism. This Trotskyist component of the organized workers’ movement has
taken a position of participation in and active support to the United
Socialist Party of Venezuela (Spanish initials, PSUV), and the PSUV calls for a
“yes” vote in the Dec. 2 referendum, as do most groups on the revolutionary
left in Venezuela and internationally. A minor exception is represented by a
splinter group in the UNT led by Orlando Chirino.
An example of the
position taken by most Trotskyists can be seen in a
recent article on the International Viewpoint web site, which is sponsored by
the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the mainstream organization
of Trotskyism internationally. This article makes clear that the battle for the
“yes” vote is part of the class struggle in Venezuela today, while the “no” vote is supported by
imperialism and its allies among the Venezuelan capitalist class. (See “
Thus, Petras’s blanket statement, at one point in
his article, that “the Trotskyists” are calling for a
“no” vote is factually way off, and Petras
must undoubtedly be aware of that, since he is a well-informed ex-professor of
Latin American studies with many years of acquaintance with the world Trotskyist movement. The only question is, Why did he choose to make this undiscriminating assertion at
this particular time? Petras has shown that he is capable
of taking very strange, even inexplicable positions. Recently he advocated that
To make it very clear, the fact is that—regardless of Petras’s
wild assertions—most revolutionaries, and that means most Trotskyists,
are with the majority of exploited and oppressed Venezuelan workers, peasants,
students, and the urban and rural poor, calling for a “yes” vote on Dec. 2 and
for the further advance of socialist revolution in Venezuela, Latin America,
and the world.