Delegates to the November 2009 “International Encounter of Left Parties,”
held in Caracas at the invitation of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, endorsed his
proposal to hold a conference in April 2010 to discuss launching a “Fifth
International.” Among those supporting this initiative were representatives of El
Salvador’s Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN),
Nicaragua’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), Evo
Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) of Bolivia, the Alianza País of
Ecuador and various other leftist organizations from around the world. The new
“International” is advertised as “a space for socialist-oriented
parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonize a common strategy for the
struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism”
(Venezuelanalysis.com, 30 November 2009).
The League for the Fifth International (L5I), whose flagship is the British Workers
Power group, has been critical of a proposed Bolivarian Fifth International headquartered
in Caracas. Castigating Alan Woods’ ostensibly Trotskyist International Marxist
Tendency for being insufficiently critical of the Venezuelan líder
máximo, the L5I observed:
“…Chávez’ simultaneous support for the brutally
repressive regimes of Presidents Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran
indicate his confusion of socialism with ‘anti-imperialist’ military
bonapartism. This shows that his purpose in creating a new International is to establish a
support mechanism for his own, and what he evidently regards as analogous,
regimes.
“…[I]t is completely crazy to see him as the instrument,
conscious or otherwise, of the world revolution.”
—“Hugo Chávez, the call for the Fifth
International and his Trotskyist supporters,” 25 November 2009
Quite right. Yet we recall that only a few years ago, when Chávez launched his
populist Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), Workers Power described it as a
“multi-class alliance, what Leon Trotsky called a popular front party,” but
nonetheless concluded that, in view of its mass appeal, “it would be sectarian for
revolutionary communists to do anything other than join this party.” In the same
article, the L5I leadership declared its intention to participate in “any
international initiative Chávez may promote in the months ahead” (Workers
Power, September 2007).
The L5I still maintains an upbeat attitude: “Hugo Chávez’ call for a
Fifth International in November 2009 offers an excellent opportunity to popularise the
idea of a new world party of socialist revolution” (Workers Power, Winter
2009/10). The apparent contradiction between declaring the proposed
“International” to be a revolutionary opportunity while at the same time
decrying it as a prop for bonapartists is rationalized as follows: “Chávez
conceives of the Fifth International as a support mechanism for his regime and its
policies. But he will find that the revolutionary impulses of the masses will outstrip his
limited notions of socialism” (Ibid.). This recalls how Michel Pablo and
Ernest Mandel routinely invoked the supposedly “objectively revolutionary
dynamic” of history to justify their enthusiasm for a succession of non-proletarian
formations—from Ben Bella’s petty-bourgeois Front de Libération
Nationale in the 1950s to Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in the 1970s.
To put a leftist spin on its political adaptation to the Bolivarian bonapartist’s
initiative, the L5I portrays its hypothetical intervention in the campaign for the
“Fifth International” as an attempt to rescue it from:
“bourgeois nationalists merely dressed up as socialists. If it were to
be founded under the aegis of Chávez and his bourgeois regime, then it would never
be able to chart a course of class independence.”
—“Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez calls
for Fifth International,” 25 November 2009
Of course there was never any possibility of a real competition between the tiny L5I
and Chávez over whose “aegis” would be used in founding his
“International.” But for their own reasons, Workers Power’s leaders find
it convenient to talk about a struggle for the “class independence” of what
they acknowledge amounts to little more than a “support mechanism” for various
bourgeois regimes. Rather than attempting to distinguish its “Fifth
International” from Chávez’s initiative, the L5I plays on the
ambiguities:
“The Fifth International is a vital weapon in the hands of the world
working class and its allies. Its historic mission will be to overthrow capitalism and
oppression across the world. It needs to be built, and it needs to be built on a
revolutionary basis. Everyone who is committed to this project should join us in this
fight.”
—Workers Power, Winter 2009/10
Workers Power calls on those who support “class independence” and a
“revolutionary programme” to join the “fight” to revolutionize the
Bolivarian International:
“The League for the Fifth International, which will, if it is able,
intervene in Chávez’s gathering in 2010, calls on all who support the
struggle for a new International based on proletarian class independence and a new
revolutionary programme, (whatever name or number they presently give to it) to join
forces with us in 2010 to take real steps in this direction.”
—“Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez calls
for Fifth International,” 25 November 2009
The “real steps” proposed by the L5I refer to yet another fantastic
projection—a joint conference with the French Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste
(NPA):
“it is the duty of all who consider themselves anticapitalist, like the
NPA in France, all who call themselves revolutionary socialists, communists, Leninists
and Trotskyists, to combine forces and to convene a conference of their
organisations.”
—Ibid.
There is no chance that the NPA will feel a “duty” to participate in a bloc
with Workers Power—and not only because of the vast disproportion of forces. The NPA
has no interest in promoting “proletarian class independence” in Venezuela or
anywhere else. It was founded on the basis of a commitment to reformist electoralism, and
has already in its short life demonstrated an appetite for class-collaborationist
alliances. Instead of discussing how best to expose “bourgeois nationalists merely
dressed up as socialists,” François Sabado, one of the NPA’s
senior members, wrote a statement posted on the group’s website in which he
fulsomely endorsed Chávez’s plans for an “anti-imperialist
front”:
“On the basis of this call, a broad world anti-imperialist front can be
established, to mark its solidarity with the struggle of the peoples for their social and
political rights, to oppose the new US bases in Colombia, to support, in particular, the
mobilization of the people of Honduras against the new dictatorial regime.
“In the trial of strength in which the imperialists are confronted with
the struggles of the peoples, such a world front would constitute an important instrument
to fight the power of the ruling classes, not only in Latin America but in the whole
world.”
—translated in International Viewpoint, November
2009
Workers Power’s ridiculous “tactic” of demanding that the NPA change
its spots recalls an earlier proposal that the assorted reformist cranks and bourgeois
officials of the World Social Forum (WSF) transform themselves into a force for socialist
revolution:
“Parties [in the European Social Forum (ESF)] must declare that they
will not govern in coalition with the capitalists or on their behalf but will struggle to
overthrow them.
“In this way, we can unite the ESF (and the WSF too) not only into a
democratic forum and co-ordinator of action, but also into a new World Party—a fifth
international—to struggle for an end to the rule of global capital and the
establishment of the rule of the majority of humanity.”
—Workers Power, October 2003
Chávez later put forward the same idea:
“Chávez has called for a ‘new International’ during
his recent visit to Spain….
“The idea of the WSF giving birth to an anti-imperialist International,
with agreed policies and co-ordinated action, was invoked by Chávez and
others.”
—Workers Power, March 2005
At the time Workers Power, adapting to popular illusions in the Venezuelan strongman,
was gently criticizing him for having “taken far too few radical or socialist
measures which could have won over the organised working class to his side”
(Workers Power, January 2003). We commented:
“This overlooks one detail—Chávez is a bourgeois
politician. His job is neither to expropriate capitalists nor to ‘build organs of
working class and popular resistance.’ His task is to ensure the continued
domination of capital over labor and to strengthen the position of the Venezuelan
bourgeoisie in the international capitalist world order. If Chávez is someone
Workers Power expects to carry out ‘radical or socialist measures’ why not
invite him to help launch their Fifth International?”
—1917 No. 26
It turns out the Venezuelan caudillo did not need an invitation from the L5I.
As Chávez announced plans for a “Fifth International” to
“overthrow capitalism” and “fight imperialism” alongside Mugabe
and Ahmadinejad, Workers Power correctly observed that it would be “completely
crazy” to regard him as “the instrument, conscious or otherwise, of the world
revolution.” But was it any less “crazy” to have called on Chávez
to take “socialist measures” in 2003, or to have joined him in promoting the
absurd notion that the multi-class WSF swamp could somehow be forged into a revolutionary
International? L5I members who are serious about building a genuinely Marxist
international tendency must reject the doubletalk and political zigzags their leaders pass
off as clever “tactics.”