Greetings to delegates at the PSUV founding congress
Dear comrades,
We in the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) — a Marxist organisation in Australia — wish to offer our greetings and revolutionary solidarity to the delegates at the founding congress of the provisionally named United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
We have been following with enthusiasm the struggle of the oppressed in Venezuela, led by the government of President Hugo Chavez. Our respect and admiration for the gains won, in the face of opposition from the greatest superpower in history, is immense.
We can assure you that your struggle is being followed with enthusiasm and admiration even as far away as Australia. The corporate-owned media in this country, when they bother to cover the momentous events shaking Latin America, repeat the same lies and slanders spread by US imperialism.
However, ordinary people — youth, workers and the Indigenous people — whenever they have an opportunity to hear the truth, not only strongly support the struggle of the Venezuelan people, but gain inspiration for the struggle in our own country.
We also know that this struggle is not yours alone. The struggle against imperialism and for the "socialism of the 21st Century?" is a global one. We are in complete agreement with the statement in the draft program of the PSUV, that "the grand objectives of the revolution will have only been obtained" when "together with the people of all the world we have buried capitalism in order to open the door to a new era in the history of humanity".
We believe that the continuing advance of the Venezuelan revolution, along with the PSUV, offers great opportunities to strengthen the socialist movement worldwide, and to help build links between and unite diverse socialist currents. The development of a mass party in Venezuela with a profoundly revolutionary program — based on anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and socialist principles — will have a powerful effect on the global struggle for a better world.
No one can deny that the Bolivarian revolution is in the vanguard of the world revolution, and the comrades struggling to construct the PSUV are in the vanguard of the Bolivarian revolution.
We believe that the revolutionary process in Venezuela is providing many invaluable lessons in how to create a better world. While each country has its own conditions, a new generation of fighters globally are watching and learning from your struggle.
The Venezuelan revolution is showing that it is possible to struggle — that the hopes for an "end to history" are false. Also, that it is possible to take on the powerful and win. In April 2002, the revolution was supposed to have been vanquished, but the Venezuelan people put paid to those plans — stunning the world.
The Bolivarian revolution is also reviving the socialist project in the eyes of millions. Your revolution is showing, not simply through lectures or books but through actual, living struggle, that a better world is possible — if it is socialist.
The Bolivarian revolution is proving the superiority of "people's power" over fake capitalist "democracy" every day via the communal councils and other organs of direct democracy — proving that revolutions are made by the people, not an elite.
At this founding congress, those comrades building the PSUV are showing it is both necessary and possible to construct a mass revolutionary party — that the struggle for socialism requires unity of the revolutionary forces.
We are proud that the newspaper we produce, Green Left Weekly, is the only Australian publication to maintain a Caracas bureau, providing regular news and analysis on the revolution to our readers. The DSP has also established the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network to help coordinate a broad-based solidarity campaign. The AVSN has organised five solidarity brigades to Venezuela, to allow activists to see the process for themselves, and has another two brigades planned this year.
We are aware that your revolution is facing increasing aggression at this time from imperialism — whether via powerful corporations like Exxon-Mobil or Uribe's puppet regime in Colombia.
We will continue to build the movement in solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution, and with those struggling across Latin America — especially the people of Cuba and Bolivia who are also in imperialism's firing line for refusing to submit to corporate domination.
We will continue to promote solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution at the same time as we seek to advance the movement for social justice and to halt environmental destruction in our own country, because we know that the system of imperialist capitalism is a global system . Your struggle is our struggle, and vice versa.
We wish you the best of luck for your founding congress, and may the global struggle for 21st Century socialism be victorious!
— DSP National Executive, February 12, 2008