By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
November 27, 2009 — Addressing delegates at the International Encounter of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said that with the capitalist crisis and threat of war risking the future of humanity, “the people are clamoring” for greater unity of those willing to fight for socialism.
Chavez used his November 20 speech to the conference, which involved delegates from 55 left groups from 31 countries, to call for a new international socialist organisation to unite left groups and social movements: “The time has come for us to organise the Fifth International.”
Historic
This call is historic. It follows Chavez’s call in 2005 that the only response to the barbarism of the capitalist system was to create “a new socialism of the 21st century”. In 2006, Chavez made another historic call for the creation in Venezuela of a new, mass revolutionary party in order to unite all who were part of the struggle to transform Venezuela into one party. This lead to the launch in 2007 of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) .
Chavez’s call for a new international is historic because of his authority as the head of a government leading a revolutionary movement to build socialism. The Bolivrian revolution sees itself as international. Chavez has repeatedly said that either socialism is built globally or there will be no 22nd century for humanity.
The call for a new international organisation builds on the history of the socialist movement. There have been four previous socialist “internationals”, the first created by Karl Marx in 1864, which collapsed. The Second International was formed in 1889, but fell apart when representative parties sided with their own governments in the bloodshed of World War I. The Third International was founded in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. However, Chavez said it “degenerated” under Stalinism and “betrayed” struggles for socialism around the world. Leon Trotsky founded the Fourth International in 1938. However, Trotsky died in 1940 and his followers never succeeded in building mass support.
A majority of the delegates at the Caracas conference adopted a special resolution in support of founding the “Fifth Socialist International as a space for socialist-oriented parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonise a common strategy for the struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism”. April next year has been set as the date for a conference to launch the new international.
Chavez repeated his call in his speech the next day to the congress of the PSUV, which began on November 21. He asked the congress “to include in its agenda for debate, the proposal to convene political parties and currents to create the Fifth Socialist International as a new organisation that fits the time and the challenge in which we live, and that can become an instrument of unification and coordination of the struggle of peoples to save this planet”. Chavez said the discussion “must go out to the people, to the social organisations and other forms of popular power in the country”.
The PSUV, a mass revolutionary party in formation, will no doubt take up this discussion with full vigour.
Likewise, left parties around the world will need to take a position on this extremely important proposal which has the potential to significantly advance the international socialist movement..
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