Documents

By Eva Cheng

Eva Cheng was a longtime staff writer for Green Left Weekly. This article is an introduction to the document that follows.

A letter to General Secretary Hu [Jintao] from a group of veteran CCP members, veteran cadres, veteran military personnel and intellectuals. October 2004
Translated for Links with an introductory explanation by Eva Cheng.

CONTENTS

A great opportunity to adjust the line

Not a question of 'ruling capability' but a question of the line

Our opinion on what sort of adjustment is needed on certain issues

Notes

In December, Caracas was the setting for two significant gatherings. It is no surprise that the capital of Venezuela was the location for these two meetings. Venezuela today is not only witnessing a deepening class polarisation but is also the scene of a powerful movement of the poor fighting to reclaim their dignity and sovereignty. It was here, the birthplace of the Bolivarian revolution, that the World Forum of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity and the Second Bolivarian Congress of the Peoples (CBP) took place, each in its own way a reflection of the process unfolding today in Venezuela.

This statement was issued by a meeting of the European Anti-Capitalist Left on December 5, 2004.

European Union governments are trying to impose a constitution designed behind closed doors on 450 million people. This socalled constitutional treaty has taken the place of a constituent process based on a mandate coming out of open democratic debates and sovereignty of the peoples of Europe.

This constitution is dangerous.

It consecrates the absolute primacy of the "free market". It legally forbids any infringement of private property and market relations. It refuses to give any legal status to social gains won on a national level through a century and a half of workers' struggles.

This appeal was adopted by the fifteenth national congress of the LCR, held in Saint-Denis from October 30 to November 2, 2003.

Together, we fought intransigently in defence of workers' rights in the spring of 2003. Together, we have fought against unending imperialist war. Together we have fought against capitalist globalisation, against turning the whole world into a commodity and for the new internationalism incarnated by the anti-globalisation movement.

We are faced in France and on an international level with an offensive against the rights of peoples and of workers, with a headlong rush towards the destruction of the resources of the planet, with a state of permanent war aimed at maintaining the hegemony of the US and European great powers.

At a meeting in Toronto in the fall of 2000, some 750 activists responded to a call to "rebuild the left" by developing a structured movement against capitalism. This call for a new political formation that would be "more than a movement, less than a party" was similar to other initiatives in Canada and around the world that have been undertaken as the traditional organisations of the political left have waned.

The call was based on the understanding that the discovery and creation of a new kind of left politics is not going to be easy. It was in this spirit that, when the first Toronto initiative faltered, a group of independent socialists continued to meet with other activists across Ontario to try to learn from the experience and find a way forward. The group asked hard questions about how radically different from that first initiative a new political formation of the left would need to be. And they exchanged ideas and assessments of the political situation in Canada and the world, both to focus debate and to arrive at areas of political agreement.

Out of this process—a ray of sunshine during the long winter of 2003—this political statement was completed, launching the Socialist Project as a new political formation on the Canadian left.

* * *

September 3, 2002

1. State of the Socialist Alliance
2. The international context
3. The potential for and constraints on the Socialist Alliance
4. Political basis for greater unity
5. The Democratic Socialist tendency and the Socialist Alliance

Dear comrades,

I am writing to you on behalf of the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party to advise you that we have initiated a discussion in our party about making a radically bigger commitment towards left unity within the Socialist Alliance.

from the Democratic Socialist Party

This resolution was adopted by the Twentieth Congress of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party [DSP], held in Sydney from December 28, 2002 to January 1, 2003. For an explanation of its background, see Peter Boyle's article in this issue.

This Twentieth Congress of the Democratic Socialist Party:

By Murray Smith

Murray Smith is an international officer of the Scottish Socialist Party and a leader of the International Socialist Movement, a Marxist current within it. This paper has been adopted by the ISM.

Resolution adopted by the nineteenth Congress of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party, January 2001