Hands Off Venezuela: Building Solidarity at the 2006 World Social Forum

1. It is incontestable that at the current stage, what Chavez and his
supporters are doing in Venezuela amount to Social Democratic reform
implementation, not a socialist revolution. Given the current global
politics of imperialist neoliberalism imposed by the WTO, IMF, World Bank
and the US treasury department (for these four have to be considered
together), and the fact that since the collapse of the so called socialist
countries of East Europe and the USSR and the capitalist transformation of
China there is not even any shadow of resistance at the highest global
bourgeois "legitimate" body, i.e., the United Nations, any call for an ultra
rapid revolutionary transformation, or an armed revolution along Maoist
lines, are utopian. Popular consciousness and organisation are up to
categorical resistance to the effects of this neoliberalism, as the role of
the masses in Venezuela, in bolivia, or even in Argentina or sectors in
Brazil (like the MST) show.

But neither is resistance wide enough and deep
enough nor is the consciousness a categorical socialist transformatory
consciousness. This will develop (hopefully) through the struggles, not by
our preaching from outside what the ideal line should be. We can moreover
earn the moral right to criticise errors, shortcomings, and so on, only when
we show, in practice, that we are deepening class struggle in our countries
and building solidarity movements, not out of just bourgeois humanitarian
grounds but along class grounds.

I would like to know concretely what Etomer
does in terms of such actions. Like, I go to solidarity programmes if there
are any, I try to translate and make available in Bengali stuff on Brazil,
Venezuela, Bolivia so that working people can read these and decide for
themselves, rather than rely on what garbage is published by the bourgeois
media, and I try to take part in the social struggles of my country, through
various organisations, both mass organisation type and party type.

2. This involves a question of proletarian foreign policy. During the US
Civil War, Marx motivated the International Working Men’s Association to
take a supportive stand for the North. Now, as any student of history knows,
the struggle in the North was led by Lincoln, who was willing to compromise
over emancipation provided the South did not chalenge the unity of the USA.
He firmed up his position only when presented with a fait accomli by the
Slaveowner states. Moreover, he was incontestably a bourgeois leader of a
country that was already showing clear signs of hegemonism (remember the
Monroes Doctrine, the Guano Act, the wars with Mexico). So was Marx a
drivelling idiot who did not understand the first points of working class
independent politics?

3. Given the neoliberal offensive, serious and genuine reformist politics
will have the result of bringing the country carrying out such policies into
conflict with US imperialism. Through such struggles, it might happen that a
larger cadre force will be created. It is perfectly admissible to argue that
specific measures may or may not be correct. But to suggest that Chavez, or
anyone else, any leader of any country, even if leader by virtue of the most
ideally perfect revolution from below, can reject alliances with some
bourgeois countries in order to stave off US offensives, is to propose a
theory of either simultaneous revolutions everywhere, or doom every
revolution to almost immediate defeat.

4. The WSF is not a revolutionary network. But it is a network where
revolutionaries interact with mass movements of all sorts. Some years back,
there was an anti-US rally in Calcutta, called by a network. A couple of
sectarian grouplets refused to participate on the ground that several NGOs
were part of the network, that the NGOs were part of an imperialist agenda,
and so the rally was not really anti-imperialist. Those of us who were
trying to build the demonstration, even if we were not part of that network,
argued that if NGOs, depite receiving funding from western agencies, are
willing to speak out againsat the imperilist offensive in Afghanistan, it is
not we who create illusions about them, but they who, for whatever reasons,
are compelled to support our struggle.

I suppose comrades in most countries
face similar arguments from sectarians. In the same way, if some prominent
personalities who attend the WSF have indeed been bought up, but still
commit themselves to solidarity with ongoing revolutions, the problem is
between them and their bosses. All we need to know is, who are the bought
people. Otherwise, flinging allegations like "the capitalist states have
managed to take over much of the so-called ’anti-global’ movement and
change it into an intstrument for capitalist fractions ", or "This has been done by
corrupting leaders of the World Social Forum", becomes an offensive
insinuation or even plain slander.

Kunal