PSUV
Venezuela: Socialists debate party's direction
By Kiraz Janicke, Caracas
November 16, 2009 – Venezuelanalysis.com – The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) held nation-wide delegate elections on November 15 for its First Extraordinary Congress which will be held over the next several weekends in Caracas.
Up for discussion at the congress are the party’s program, principles, organisational structure and most likely the mechanism for selecting candidates for the national parliamentary elections of 2010.
A total of 7800 members competed in the elections for 772 delegate places to the congress. Although the PSUV nominally has nearly 7 million members, voting in the delegate elections was open only to the 2,450,377 “active” members of the party.
Caracas to host world meeting of left parties, October 7-9, 2009
By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
Young Venezuelan revolutionary and environmentalist: `Tomorrow is too late’
“More than just an economic crisis, what humanity faces today is a systemic crisis”, Rangel said. “We can see this if we look at the energy crisis, and the social crisis that is generating a lot of poverty and misery. But above all, we can see this in the ecological crisis. There is a grand ecological crisis in the world today and I believe we are at a pivotal point, a moment when we need to make tough decisions. The current mode of development is incompatible with life.”
Rangel explained that this is why, “in Venezuela, we believe in a model for life and sustainable development where we can generate the greatest possible sum of happiness, not only for this generation, but for future generations”.
Venezuela: Socialist party prepares for ‘transition to socialism’; PSUV discussion document
By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
August 8, 2009 -- On August 1, United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) members across the country participated in 1556 local assemblies to discuss the reorganisation of the party’s base into local ``patrols''.
This push to strengthen revolutionary organising comes at a time when attacks on Venezuela’s revolutionary process revolution “from outside and within have intensified”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, also president of the PSUV, said on August 4.
“Each time that the revolution advances and accelerates its march, the attacks intensify. I will continue to put my foot down on the accelerator of the Bolivarian revolution. That is my role, that is my task and there is no time to lose. Today, in Venezuela, we are creating a true socialist democracy.”
After his re-election in the December 2006 presidential elections, Chavez issued a call to build a “new party… from the base” and at the service “of the people and the revolution, at the service of socialism”.
Venezuela: Class struggle intensifies over battle for workers’ control
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By Federico Fuentes
Caracas -- July 25, 2009 -- On July 22, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez again declared his complete support for the proposal by industrial workers for a new model of production based on workers’ control.
This push from Chavez, part of the socialist revolution, aims at transforming Venezuela’s basic industry. However, it faces resistance from within the state bureaucracy and the revolutionary movement. Presenting his government’s “Plan Socialist Guayana 2009-2019”, Chavez said the state-owned companies in basic industry have to be transformed into “socialist companies”.
The plan was the result of several weeks of intense discussion among revolutionary workers from the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG). The CVG includes 15 state-owned companies in the industrial Guayana region involved in steel, iron ore, mineral and aluminium production.
The workers’ roundtables were established after a May 21 workshop, where industrial workers raised radical proposals for the socialist transformation of basic industry. Chavez addressed the workshop in support of many of the proposals.
[Translators' note: The following editorials come from Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide), a magazine published by an organised tendency of the same name within Venezuela's United Socialist Party (PSUV), headed by Hugo Chávez.]
Marea
Socialista editorial, issue 20,
July 12, 2009. Translated by Sean
Seymour-Jones for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
By Federico Fuentes
June 1, 2009 -- Addressing the 400-strong May 21 workshop with workers from the industrial heartland of Guayana, dedicated to the “socialist transformation of basic industry”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez noted with satisfaction the outcomes of discussions: “I can see, sense and feel the roar of the working class.”
“When the working class roars, the capitalists tremble”, he said.
Chavez announced plans to implement a series of radical measures, largely drawn from proposals coming from the workers’ discussion that day. The workers greeted each of Chavez’s announcements with roars of approval, chanting “This is how you govern!”
Chavez said: “The proposals made have emerged from the depths of the working class. I did not come here to tell you what to do! It is you who are proposing this.”
Nationalisation and workers’ control
By Federico Fuentes
March 21, 2009 -- “This government is here to protect the people, not the bourgeoisie or the rich”, proclaimed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on February 28, as he ordered soldiers to take over two rice-processing plants owned by Venezuelan food and drink giant Empresas Polar.
The move was made in order to ensure that the company was producing products subjected to the government-imposed price controls that aim to protect the poor from the affects of global price rises and inflation.
Under Venezuelan law, companies that can produce basic goods regulated by price controls must guarantee that 70-95% of their products are of the regulated type.
“They’ve refused 100 times to process the typical rice that Venezuelans eat”, said Chavez. “If they don’t take me seriously, I’ll expropriate the plants and turn them into social property.”
PSUV document: Crack in the accumulation of world capitalism (march towards the global depression)
The following document was produced by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) national leadership. It has been translated from the Spanish-language original by Federico Fuentes for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
On March 21, all PSUV battalions met to discuss the document, together with an article written by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez (read it HERE). The day after, Chavez announced his government’s anti-crisis measures (see http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4314).
The document is significant not only for what it says, but also because it is the beginning of a mass discussion on how to confront the crisis in Venezuela in the lead-up to the PSUV’s August congress (for more see http://www.escambray.cu/Eng/news/Wvenezuela090320434.htm).
Venezuela: Referendum victory advances process of change
By Chris Kerr
Caracas, February 20, 2009 -- “Today we opened wide the gates of the future … Truth against lies [and] the dignity of the homeland has triumphed”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez insisted to tens of thousands of celebrating supporters after Venezuelans voted to amend the constitution to end term limits on all elected politicians — allowing Chavez to stand for re-election in 2012.
“Venezuela will not return to its past of indignity”, Chavez stated, referring to the four decades of alternating rule by two corrupt parties that followed the overthrow of a military dictatorship in 1958.
During this period, known as the Fourth Republic, billions of dollars of oil wealth was squandered by a corrupt elite that increasingly opened the country to plundering by foreign corporate interests while the poverty rate sky-rocketed. Chavez was first elected in 1998 on a platform of transforming Venezuela (creating a “Fifth Republic”).
The turn-out of voters in the referendum was the largest ever, with 54.85% (or more than 6.3 million) voting in favour of the amendment. Around 5.2 million voted “no”. The result was declared free and fair by independent international observers.
Venezuela: A balance sheet of the constitutional referendum victory
By Gonzalo Villanueva
Venezuela’s February 15 constitutional amendment referendum, which proposed to modify the existing constitution to allow politicians to stand for re-election without restrictions, was triumphant. However, the referendum was more than a legal amendment – the removal of term limits – it was a political issue: to continue the revolutionary project or not? The Venezuelan people have convincingly signalled their desire to continue with the Bolivarian process, under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. The victory undoubtedly opens a path to advance and deepen the Bolivarian Revolution.
The amendment achieved a significant 6.3 million votes (54% of the vote). These latest electoral result confirms that the chavista camp has recovered significantly from the 2007 constitutional referendum defeat of 4.4 million votes (49.29%), a trend also followed in the 2008 regional elections. However, there is still a shortfall in comparison to the 2006 presidential elections that achieved 7.3 million votes (62.84%).
Democracy wins in Venezuelan referendum; Chavez promises `socialist democracy'
[Click HERE for more coverage of the referendum campaign.]
A statement from the Australia–Venezuela Solidarity Network
February 17, 2009 -- On Sunday, February 15, Venezuelans voted in a referendum to change the country’s constitution to allow elected officials to re-stand for election without restriction. Previously, Venezuela’s constitution allowed elected officials, including the president, to stand for only two terms.
With 94.2% of the votes counted, the National Electoral Council announced that the “Yes” vote had won with 6,003,584 votes (54.36%). The “No” vote received 5,040,082 votes (45.63%). Dozens of election observers from international bodies such as the United Nations and the Organization of American States verified that the referendum was free and fair.