A few months ago, we received two messages about Che Guevara form a comrade called E.K. We are publishing the letter we sent to him in April, and using this opportunity to complete and elaborate on our responses to certain questions. We are making this correspondence public because, as EK himself said, "we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of his death in combat." Our aim isn't to join in the celebrations, but on the contrary, to try to understand if Che Guevara was really a revolutionary and if the working class and its younger generations should claim his legacy or not.

 

Some extracts from EK's message

According to comrade EK, Che Guevara was an authentic fighter for the cause of oppressed peoples. In fact, for him, "Che's internationalism is without question. He is the model of the international combatant and of solidarity between peoples". He was supposedly one of the few revolutionaries who dared to criticize the USSR: "During the second conference of Afro-Asian solidarity, Che didn't beat around the bush in his criticisms of the conservative and exploitative positions of the USSR" Finally, in his first letter, EK reveals his vision of the proletariat and the role of revolutionaries: "As for the historic agent of society's transformation, there's no reason, it seems, to reduce the concept of the proletariat only to workers, the absolute negation of humanity's condition. (...)The task of intellectuals is to introduce to the proletariat the consciousness of its situation by eminently political means."

Following our response, comrade EK quickly sent us a second message in which he wished to differentiate himself from all those who transform Che into an icon, endlessly reproducing his image on T-shirts and poster: "The mythification of Che through the duplication of his image tends to deify his life and his deeds." But above all, he reaffirms in the message that "since he was following distinct objectives, the Che would logically have been led to depart from the social-imperialist model of the USSR. The CIA and the KGB even cooperated to get rid of him during the attempted revolution in Bolivia." The comrade concludes, "Ernesto Che Guevara paid for his integrity with his life. To pay homage to him is to read his texts: to perpetuate his memory, is to continue his struggle, is to support his values. As the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of his death come to a close, it is time to re-invigorate his thought and to re-enliven his ideas."

Our reply to EK

We thank you for your message from early April. Forgive our late reply. We wish to make a critique of what you wrote to us. This critique doesn't signify an end to our correspondence. On the contrary we remain willing to respond to your questions and your points of view. We would like to respond to what you say about Che Guevara by seriously and sincerely studying what really were, as you ask, "his values", "his ideas", and "his struggle".

Is Che Guevara an example for today's revolutionary youth?

In this month of October, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara, killed by the Bolivian army, framed by the CIA.

Since 1967 "the Che" has become the eternal symbol of "romantic revolutionary youth": He died young, gun in his hands, fighting against American imperialism, the great "defender of the poor masses of Latin America." Everyone has that image in his mind, of Che and his red-starred beret with a sad and distant look on his face.

His well-known travel diaries greatly contributed to popularizing the story of this rebel, who came from a slightly bohemian family from Argentina, who threw himself into an adventurous voyage on his motorcycle on the roads of South America, using his medical skills to help the poor... He lived in Guatemala at a moment (1956) when the United States fomented yet another coup d'Etat against a government that didn't suit it. This permanent chokehold by America on Latin American will feed Guevara's lifelong, implacable hatred of the former. Later on, he joins Castro's group of Cubans in Mexico, refugees there after an aborted attempt at overthrowing the Cuban dictator, Batista, who had long been supported by the United States. After a series of adventures, this group settles in the mountains of Cuba until Batista's defeat in January 1959. The basic ideology of this group is nationalism, "Marxism" being but a convenient cover for an exacerbated anti-Yankee "resistance", even if some elements, including Guevara himself, considered themselves "Marxists." The Cuban Communist Party, which in its time supported Batista by the way, sent one of its leaders, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, to Castro in 1958, only a few months before the latter's victory.

This guerrilla group was in no way an expression of a peasant revolt, and even less of the working class. It was a military expression of a fraction of the bourgeoisie seeking to overthrow another fraction and take its place. There was no "popular uprising" when the Castroist guerrillas took power. They arrived, as is often the case in Latin America, and replaced one military clique with another one. The exploited layers and the poor, enlisted or not by the putschists, don't play a major role, except to cheer the new masters in power. Against the rather feeble resistance by Batista's troops, Guevara seemed like an intrepid guerrillero, whose determination and growing charisma threatened to overshadow his master Fidel. After the victory over Batista, Fidel Castro puts Che in charge of the "revolutionary tribunals", a bloody masquerade in the best tradition of settling scores between fractions of the bourgeoisie, particularly in Latin America. Che Guevara takes his role seriously, with conviction and with zeal, putting in place a "popular" justice where Batista's torturers are judged, but also everyday folks based on simple denunciations. Later on at the UN, in response to Latin American representatives, those kind-hearted "democrats" who were offended by his methods, Che says: "We shot, we still shoot and we will continue to shoot as long as is necessary." These practices have nothing to do with some clumsy defence of revolutionary justice. They are, let's say it again, the typical methods of a fraction of the bourgeoisies that has taken the upper hand over another fraction by armed force.

One may idolise the austere "hero" of the Sierra Maestra, the "guerrilla leader" who died a few years later in the mountains of Bolivia, but in reality, he played the role of doing the dirty work of placing in power a regime that is communist in name only.

Che Guevara: internationalist?

You tell us: "Che's internationalism is without question," and "during the second conference of Afro-Asian solidarity, Che didn't beat around the bush in his criticisms of the conservative and exploitative positions of the USSR" and finally, "Che would logically have been led to depart from the social-imperialist model of the USSR."

Castro's nationalist regime quickly clothed itself with the qualifier "communist", in other words, the regime rallied to the imperialist camp headed by the USSR. Cuba's proximity to America's coastline could obviously only worry the leader of the Western bloc. The Stalinisation of the island, with an important presence of military and civilian personnel and the secret services of Eastern bloc states, would reach its apogee in 1962 with the missile crisis.

During this process, Che Guevara, now minister of industry (1960-61), in order to solidify the new alliance with the "socialist camp", is sent by Castro to the countries of that camp, where he lavished the USSR with praise: "this country that so loves peace", "where freedom of thought reigns", "the mother of liberty"... He also praises the "extraordinary" North Korea or Mao's China where "everyone is full of enthusiasm, everyone is working overtime" and so forth for all the countries of the East: "the accomplishments of the socialist countries are extraordinary. There's no possible comparison between their systems of life, their systems of development and those of the capitalist countries." We will return to Guevara's supposed lack of love for the USSR. But, contrary to what you affirm, Che never uttered the slightest principled doubts about the Stalinist system. For him, the USSR and its bloc were the "socialist and progressive" camp, and his own fight slotted well into that of the Russian bloc against the Western bloc. His slogan "Create one, two, several Vietnams", is not an "internationalist" slogan but a nationalist one favourable to the Russian bloc! His real criterion wasn't really social change, but hatred against the leader of the other bloc, the United States.

Basically, after World War II, the world found itself divided into two antagonistic blocs, one led by America, the other by the USSR. "National liberation" proved itself to be a perfect ideological mystification used to justify the military mobilisation of populations. Neither the working class nor the other exploited classes had anything to gain from these wars. They were simply used by the different bourgeois fractions and their imperialist sponsors. The division of the world into two blocs after the Yalta accords meant that any exit from one bloc would result in the entry into the opposing bloc. And Cuba is the perfect example of this: this country went from the corrupt Batista dictatorship, directly under Washington's thumb, controlled by its secret services and every sort of mafia, into the Stalinist bloc. Cuba's history is the tragic epitome of the "struggles for national liberation" of the last half-century.

Before saying when and how Guevara supposedly distanced himself from the USSR, it is necessary to be sure of the nature of the USSR and its bloc. Behind the defence of Che as a revolutionary is the idea that the USSR, whether we like it or not, despite its faults, was the "socialist and progressive bloc." This is the greatest lie of the 20th century. There definitely was a proletarian revolution in Russia, but it was defeated. The Stalinist counter-revolution gave itself a slogan: "the construction of socialism in a single country", a fundamentally un-marxist slogan. For Marxism, "the workers have no country"! It's this genuine internationalism that served as a compass to the entire global revolutionary wave that began in 1917, and to all the revolutionaries of the era, from Lenin and the Bolsheviks to Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacists. The aberrant adoption of this "theory" of a "socialist motherland" to defend resulted in the systematic usage of bourgeois methods: terror and state capitalism, the most ferocious and totalitarian expression of capitalist exploitation!

Did Che "depart from the social-imperialist model of the USSR"?

The origin of Che's critiques of the USSR was the missile crisis of1962. For the USSR, its domination of Cuba was a godsend. Finally, it could return the favour to the United States, who threatened the USSR directly from countries close to it, like Turkey. The USSR began to install nuclear missile bases only a few miles from American coastlines. The United States responded by putting in place a total embargo of the island, forcing the Russian ships to return home. Khrushchev, the master of the Kremlin at the time, was finally forced to remove his missiles. For a few days in October 1962, the imperialist confrontations between those who presented themselves as the "free world" and those who presented themselves as the "socialist and progressive world" almost pulled mankind to the brink of extinction. Khrushchev was then considered by the Castroist leadership as lacking the "balls" to attack the United States. In an excess of patriotic hysteria, where the Castroist slogan "fatherland or death" takes it most sinister meanings, they are prepared to sacrifice the people (they'll say that it's the people who are willing to sacrifice themselves) on the altar of atomic war. In this perverse delirium, Guevara could only be in the forefront. He writes: "They are right (the countries of the OAS) to be fearful of 'Cuban subversion', it is the frightful example of a people willing to pulverize itself with atomic weapons so that its ashes will serve as cement for building a new society, and who, when an agreement is reached on the removal of the atomic rockets without it being consulted, doesn't sigh in relief, doesn't receive the truce with gratitude. It throws itself into the arena to [...] affirm [...] its decision to fight, even alone, against all the dangers and against the atomic threat of Yankee imperialism". This "hero" decided that the Cuban people are willing to extinguish itself for the fatherland... Thus, at the origin of the critique of the USSR is not a loss of faith in the virtues of "Soviet communism" (Stalinist capitalism in reality); on the contrary, Che's complaint is that the system didn't go to its logical conclusion of military confrontation. And the talks in Algiers on which you base your claim that Che departed "from the social-imperialist model of the USSR", don't change the fact of Guevara's attachment to Stalinist positions. On the contrary! During those famous talks, he questions the "mercantilism" in the relations between the countries of the Eastern bloc but he still calls them socialist, and "friendly peoples": "the socialist countries are, to a certain extent, accomplices in imperialist exploitation [...]. [They] have a moral duty to end their tacit complicity with the exploiter countries of the West". Beyond its radical appearance, such a critique is thus that of someone within the Stalinist system. Worse still, it emanates from a leader who participated with all his energy in the instalment of state capitalism in Cuba! Anyway, after that, Guevara will no longer officially offer the slightest critique of the USSR.

Che Guevara, at the moment he was assassinated by the CIA and the Bolivian army in 1967, was the victim not only of American imperialism, but also of the Kremlin's new political orientation of "peaceful coexistence" with the Western bloc. We won't go into the reasons that propelled the USSR and its bloc to take this "turn". But this "turn" has nothing whatsoever to do with some "betrayal" of the peoples who wished to "liberate themselves" from imperialism, nor of the proletariat. The politics of the Stalinist bourgeoisie often changed in accord with its class interests. The Cuban missile affair showed the leaders of Stalinist imperialism that they lacked the means to defy the U.S in its own backyard and that they needed to be prudent in Latin America. This was a point that Guevara and a fraction of the Cuban leadership refused to understand, to the point of becoming a nuisance not only to the USSR, but also to their own Cuban friends. From that moment, Che Guevara's destiny was sealed: after the disastrous adventure in Congo, he ends up alone in Bolivia, with a handful of comrades in arms, abandoned by the Bolivian CP which, in the end, lined up with Moscow. For the more "Muscovite" factions, the adherents of the "foco" (the Guevara-inspired guerrilla "theory" of revolution) were a bunch of petty bourgeois adventurers, "cut off from the masses". And for the factions of the CPs who favoured armed struggle, who critically supported every other movement, the "officials" of the CPs were coffee-shop revolutionaries, privileged bureaucrats who were also "cut off from the masses." For us left communists, these are two forms of the same counter-revolution, two variants of the same great lie, that the Stalinist counter-revolution was in continuity with the October revolution, and that the USSR was communist.

What was Che Guevara's vision of the working class?

For you, the intellectual's task is "to introduce to the proletariat the consciousness of its situation..." You seem to echo Che Guevara's vision of the "revolutionary elite". But doesn't this position of Che's in reality hide a profound contempt of the working class? What do his lyrical flights about "the new man in the Cuban revolution" really reveal?

Revolutionary proletarian unity has a concrete expression: class solidarity. It is this spontaneous solidarity during the organisation of the struggle, created through mutual aid and fraternity, that feeds the revolutionary proletariat's capacities for dedication and devotion. But this "devotion" from the mouth of Guevara, in the best of cases, sounds like a quasi-mystical call to supreme martyrdom (one must recognize that he was always prone to sacrifice, and undoubtedly was willing to become a "martyr" for the imperialist cause that he and the "wilful" people of Cuba defended at the moment of the missile crisis)... Beyond his own "exemplary" behaviour, is his vision of "sacrifice" and "heroism" (just like the nationalist idealism exalted and spread by the Stalinists of the "Resistance" during the Second World War) that would be imposed from above, for the needs of the state, under the whip of a "lider maximo". This vision rests on the petty bourgeois intellectual's contempt for the "proletarian mass" which is looked upon from high above, which supposedly needs to be "educated" so that it can understand the "benefits of the revolution". "The mass..." declares Guevara condescendingly, "is not, as is claimed, the sum of elements of the same type...which acts like a flock of sheep. It is true that it follows its leaders, basically Fidel Castro, without hesitation...." "Viewed superficially, it might appear that those who speak of the subordination of the individual to the state are right. The mass carries out with matchless enthusiasm and discipline the tasks set by the government, whether in the field of the economy, culture, defence, sports... The initiative generally comes from Fidel, or from the revolutionary leadership, and is explained to the people, who make it their own" (Socialism and Man in Cuba, 1965).

In fact, when you tell us that "there's no need to reduce the concept of the proletariat only to workers," your reasoning surely involuntarily draws its roots in this contemptuous vision of the working class. In fact, one of the common characteristics of the different mutations of Stalinism (from Maoism to Castroism), is their distrust and their disdain of the working class, making a mythical poor peasantry the "agents of the revolution" led by intellectuals who "introduce" consciousness into the brains of the masses. At best, for these neo-Stalinists, the working class was useful in terms of providing them with some historical reference, pawns for their revolution. One never finds, in the writing of these pseudo-revolutionaries, the slightest reference to a working class organising itself in the organs of class power: the soviets. These clones of Stalinism no longer need to disguise their state capitalist ideology or talk about workers' councils and other expressions of proletarian life in the Russian revolution. All we have left is the state led by "enlightened" people. And the masses, who are sometimes allowed to show some "initiative", are recruited into "committees for the defence of the revolution" and other organs of social surveillance.

In Cuba, one of the major organs for controlling the working class were, once again and unsurprisingly, the unions. The Cuban unions (CTC) were already American-style unions, perfectly integrated into "free-market capitalism" and in its corruption. These were quickly transformed by the Cuban leadership, in 1960, into Stalinist unions, on a bureaucratic and statist model. The first decision of the Castroist regime was to charge the unions with he task of keeping the workers in line and to enforce the ban on strikes in the companies. And here again, this attack against the working class will be justified by anti-Americanism and the "defence of the Cuban people". Taking advantage at the time of a strike against wage decreases at some American companies in Cuba, the Castroist leaders stigmatise the strikers as wreckers and use the opportunity to declare a "strike on the strike" from the mouth of the new Castroist head of the CTC.

In the past few weeks we have seen debates about the life and works of Che. On one side, the side of the apostles of "the death of communism", the right-wing fractions of the bourgeoisie, with the help of some historians, are always ready to tell us about the "anti-democratic" role, his role as executioner-in-chief, as the head of the "revolutionary" tribunals at the beginning of the Castro era. They rail against each other on the question of whether the executions were "excessive", if a "bloodbath" occurred, if the justice was "moderate" or "arbitrary". For us, as we said earlier, he simply played his necessary role in the process of putting a new regime into power, one as bourgeois and repressive as the previous one. On the other side, we have been battered with lies and semi-truths about his glory. One only has to see how the Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire which, with its desire to replace the PCF and to become the leading "anti-capitalist" party in France, today has embraced "the Che" and exploits his "young and rebellious" image.

Dear comrade EK, this is the reality: in all these youths who wear Che T-shirts, there is surely a generous and sincere heart, wishing to fight against the horrors and injustices of this world. But if Che is being put forward as an icon, it is in order to sterilise the enthusiasm that feeds revolutionary passion. Che is just one in a long line of nationalist and Stalinist leaders, more dashing than the others maybe, but still a representative of that tropical mutation of the Stalinist counter-revolution that is Castroism.

Despite our differences, comrade EK, the discussion obviously remains open.... we warmly encourage you to continue to discuss with us.

International Communist Current,

November 2007.

In mid-November, as the workers of Dubai went back to work after a massive and spontaneous revolt, the press and the TV was headlining the story of the nephew of Dubai's king Abdallah, Al Walid Ibn Talal, who had just bought an Airbus A380 for his personal use.

Not a word about this massive strike movement! Not a word about this open rebellion by hundreds of thousands of super-exploited workers! Once again the bourgeoisie clamped a blackout on its international media.

Against the inhuman exploitation of the bourgeoisie....

Dubai has, over the last few years, become an immense building site, in which vast skyscrapers, each one more unbelievable than the one before, have sprung up like mushrooms. This Emirate is one of the bourgeoisie's symbols of the ‘economic miracle' of the East and the Middle East. But behind this shop window lays a very different reality: not the reality presented to tourists and businessmen, but the reality of the working class which has to sweat blood and tears for these ‘architectural dreams'.

Out of the million inhabitants of the Emirate, more than 80% are workers of foreign origin, the majority Indian but also Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and, recently, Chinese. It seems that they are cheaper than Arab workers! They keep the building sites going 24/7 for practically nothing. They earn the equivalent of 100-150 euros a month. They build these prestigious towers and palaces but they live in cabins, several to a room and parked out in the desert. They are taken to work in cattle trucks they call buses. All this without medical care or pensions... and to prevent any danger of resistance, the employers hang on to their passports, just in case. Naturally, no account is taken of the workers' families who have to stay back at home. The workers can only see them every 2 or 3 years because it is so difficult to find the money for the trip.

But you can't treat human beings like this indefinitely and get away with it.

....the massive struggle of the proletariat

In the summer of 2006, the workers of Dubai already showed their ability to enter massively and collectively into struggle. Despite the repression which followed, they have today again dared to stand up against their exploiters and torturers. Through these struggles, they have shown their courage, their extraordinary fighting spirit, uniting against this life of misery and slavery. Like their class brothers in Egypt, they have braved the established power despite the risks involved. Because in the Emirates, strikes are forbidden and punishment is immediate: withdrawal of work-permits and a life-time ban on working there.

And yet, fed up with not having been paid for several months, "On Saturday 27th October, over 4,000 building workers came out onto the street, blocked the roads leading to the industrial zone of Jebel Ali, and threw stones at police vehicles. They demanded more buses to take them to work, less overcrowded lodgings and wages that would allow them to live in dignity" (Courrier International, 2.11.07). Recognising themselves in this massive struggle, thousands of workers from other enterprises joined the strikers.

Unsurprisingly, the bourgeoisie and its state responded violently. The anti-riot squad used water-cannon to disperse the demonstrators and threw many of them into police vans. "Denouncing this ‘barbaric behaviour', the minister of Labour told them to chose between going back to work and the abrogation of their contracts, deportation and a loss of compensation" (www.lemaroc.org/economie/article_8622.html [5]). Despite this police repression, and the government's threats, the strike movement continued to spread to three other zones in Dubai. According to a line in Associated Press on 5 November, there were up to 400,000 workers on strike!

The threats of punishment and repression were issued on the pretext that police vehicles had been damaged, something quite unacceptable for bourgeois order! But who was responsible for the worst of the violence? The answer is clear: those who turn the lives of hundreds of thousands of worker into a veritable hell.

What is the perspective for such struggles?

In Dubai, the proletariat has shown its strength and determination. The bourgeoisie was actually forced to take a temporary step back, putting aside its purely repressive tactics. Thus, after announcing the expulsion of the 4,000 Asian workers who initiated the movement, "the tone was rather one of appeasement on the following Wednesday" (AFP). The massive scale of this struggle had "made the Dubai government bend somewhat, ordering the ministers and the enterprises to review wages and install a minimum wage"....officially of course. In reality, the bourgeoisie will continue with its attacks. The sanctions against the ringleaders seem to have been maintained. And there is no doubt that the bourgeoisie will keep a tight grip over this and try to maintain the ferocious levels of exploitation it imposes in Dubai.

Nevertheless, the ruling class has had to take account of the rise in militancy amongst this section of the working class, despite its lack of experience in the struggle. This is why it is tying another string to its bow: as well as repression, it is also seeking to use more ideological means. The first attempt at this, however, has been rather ludicrous and ineffective. Faced with the multiplication of conflicts in the last two years, "the authorities have created a commission in the police force which has the job of dealing with questions from the workers, and have given the workers a freephone number to use for complaints, most of them relating to the non-payment of wages". Make your complaints directly to the forces of repression - you could hardly be more provocative! Rather more adroit than this is the government's efforts to form a trade union in the enterprises in order to control future struggles ‘from the inside'.

The question is not so much the perspective for the struggle in a mini-state like Dubai, but the fact that this struggle is part of a much wider movement: the international struggle of the working class. "The workers have no country" said Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto of 1848. The present struggles of the proletariat are part of the same chain of struggles against capitalist exploitation. From India to Dubai, via Egypt, the Middle East, the African continent or Latin America, to the countries of Europe and North America, the workers' struggle is on the rise. The international development of the class struggle is a massive encouragement for workers wherever the movement breaks out. In particular, the emergence of massive movements like the ones in Dubai, Bangladesh or Egypt must act as a stimulus for the workers of the most advanced countries, while the latter must assume a particular responsibility in announcing the perspective of a struggle against the whole system of exploitation, sharing their accumulated historical experience, showing in practice how to take the struggle in hand and explaining why we cannot count on the unions and the left to do that for us.

The bourgeoisie and its media do all they can to stifle the news of workers' struggles around the world to prevent this sharing of experience, this development of consciousness. The struggles in Dubai are the proof that everywhere the working class is suffering the devastating effects of the world economic crisis, and that everywhere it is sharpening its weapons of consciousness and solidarity in response. Map, 18th November 2007.

We are publishing our response to a letter sent by a reader from Brazil (T), who asks our opinion about an article he received, from which we are publishing some extracts, and which covers the struggles and mobilizations of the oil workers against the state oil company "Petroleos de Venezuela" (PDVSA) last September, demanding better wages and contractual benefits. The comrade also asks for our commentary about the reduction in the working day, which is proposed by President Chavez in the constitutional reforms that will be voted upon on December 2.

Letter from Comrade T

Hello comrades,

I'm forwarding an article I received from a comrade in Venezuela, so that you can send me your thoughts. I'm also asking you for details on Chavez' proposed reduction of the working day, because that has sparked a lot of discussion over here.
Regards,
T

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Venezuelan Oil Workers Clash with Police Over Collective Contract

September 30th 2007, by Kiraz Janicke - Venezuelanalysis.com

Caracas, September 29, 2007, (venezuelanalysis.com) - Venezuela's Energy Minister and president of the state owned oil company PDVSA, Rafael Ramirez, assured that the collective contract for oil workers, which has been under negotiation since April, would be finalised in the next two weeks after clashes between oil workers and police in Anzoátegui state on Thursday left several people injured.

Some 150 workers from the oil refinery of Puerto La Cruz, together with workers from the Jose Industrial Complex were marching to the offices of the Venezuelan Oil Corporation (CVP) in Urbaneja municipality to present a document to Ramirez, who was meeting with a negotiating commission of the United Oil Workers Federation of Venezuela (FUTPV), when they were intercepted by Immediate Response Group - Police Force of Anzoátegui.

In the resulting clashes, which lasted three hours, 40 workers were arrested and three were injured, including Richard Querecuto, who was shot in the left shoulder...With news of the police repression 4,000 workers from Petroanzoátegui, Petrocedeño, and the project San Cristóbal immediately stopped work.

...in a statement in solidarity with the oil workers of Anzoátegui, repudiating the police violence, the Federation of Workers UNT-Zulia said, "We consider that this situation has been generated by the intransigence of the state company PDVSA that has drawn out the discussion over the contract for months, offered conditions below the aspirations of the workers and arbitrarily imposed a junta [the FUTPV negotiating commission] to discuss the contract without having been elected by the workers."

C-CURA is calling for a change in the negotiating commission and for immediate elections within FUTPV, otherwise they say they will "radicalize" their actions. However, similar calls by C-CURA and Fedepetrol for radical actions and a general stoppage to "paralyze" the oil industry at "zero hour" on August 6 mobilized less than 1,500 workers throughout the country.

After widespread coverage and promotion of "zero hour" in the opposition private media, the dispute took on a political dimension, with other sectors of oil workers and urban poor subsequently rallying in "defense" of PDVSA.

The statement by the Federation of Workers UNT-Zulia said yesterday, "We think that some of these situations [in the oil industry] are a result of a manouvre by sectors of the rightwing within Chavismo [Chavez supporters], aimed at generating situations of conflict in the country to propagate destabilisation of the process of constitutional reform."

However, the workers in Anzoátegui rejected this claim with a banner which read,
"We are not violent protesters [guarimberos], we are oil workers." (A guarimba is an orchestrated protest aimed at provoking violence to achieve political aims.)

The oil workers in Anzoátegui have announced that they will continue their protests in the streets and remain in a state of alert, despite the promises from Ramirez for the finalization of an improved collective contract within the next two weeks.

---

Our Reply

Dear comrade T,

We greet the arrival of your letter, to which we are responding briefly and we will try to speak with you about the situation of the class struggle in Venezuela.

About the struggle of the oil workers

The article that you were sent describes part of what took place in a struggle which, between last September and October, was carried out by the workers of the state oil company PDVSA, the most important in the country, who laid off several injured workers (one of whom was pregnant) along with some arrested workers. The struggle owed to a delay of more than 8 months in the discussion over the collective contract that regulates the wages and benefits of the workers. The workers struck and demonstrated in the facilities of PDVSA in the state of Anzoategui, in eastern Venezuela, and Zulia, south of Lake Maracaibo in the west. The company, in a shady deal with the unions, which were mostly controlled by pro Chavez tendencies, delayed the discussion of the wage clauses. The workers struggle put pressure on several union bosses, such as those of C-CURA (the Unitary Autonomous Revolutionary Classist Current) of the UNT (Unitary Union of Workers), or those of FEDEPETROL (Federation of oil, chemical, and related workers of Venezuela), who were forced to "radicalize" against PDVSA and the government, so as not to be unmasked in front of the workers.

In the end, the unions and PDVSA obtained approval of a miserable wage increase of 12,000 bolivars per day, which had been rejected by the workers, who had demanded an increase of 30,000. Because of this, the monthly salary of an oil worker rose to approximately 1,320,000 Bolivars (equivalent to $610, according to the official exchange rate, and as low as $300, if we use the unofficial exchange rate, which is calculated by defining the real price of various products and services).

To give you a reference point, this salary is equivalent to a bit more than the cost of a basket of basic goods for a family of 5 (as of Oct 2007), which comes to 1 million Bolivars. Even adding the 'bonos' [unclear - either treasury bonds, or vouchers] which oil workers receive, they don't make enough to lead a dignified life; to the low salaries, we must factor in both the continual increase of the price of goods (around 25% annually)[1] and the shortages, which according to the Central Bank of Venezuela are 30% with respect to basic products. And the oil workers are some of the best paid in the country!!

Without a doubt, we think this struggle has had a political and moral victory for the oil workers and the Venezuelan proletariat as a whole:

• In the first place, the oil workers have brought the struggle back up onto their own class terrain; after having been one of the sectors hit hardest by the bourgeoisie, to being the center of the polarization between Chavistas and the opposition, who permitted the state to lay off 20,000 PDVSA employees in 2003 (at least half of whom were low-ranked workers or employees), without any sort of compensation. This struggle has a major significance at times when the Chavistas and opposition are trying to reinforce political polarization, through the campaigns for or against the constitutional reform proposed by Chavez. The workers, at least during these mobilizations, have placed themselves in the terrain of their own demands, despite the weight of the bourgeoisie's efforts to force any workers' or social struggle onto the terrain of the polarization.
• The struggle has made obvious the bourgeois, anti-worker character of the Chavez government: just as with all of the preceding governments (to which Chavismo assigns all of the social ills), the Chavez government also responds with repression, tear-gas bombs, lead, and jail against the workers who "dare" to fight for a dignified life. An important fact: the oil workers of Puerto La Cruz, in the east of the country, some of whom were sympathizers of Chavismo, have denounced the high wages of the "socialist" bosses of PDVSA who earn more than 50 times the basic monthly salary (much higher than the wages of the industry bosses during preceding governments), while they deny raises to the workers which would allow them to cover at least the basic basket of goods (the exploitation of their labor power being the primary source of the salaries and kickbacks of the upper state bureaucrats and of the profits of various sectors of the national bourgeoisie; we factor this in).
• These struggles, which were preceded by others last May in which the oil workers mobilized to obtain the reinstatement of more than 1000 workers of the recently nationalized oil companies whom the "socialist" government of Chavez had tried to throw to the street, are genuine and important expression of workers' solidarity, in which the families of the affected workers also participated.
• As we've said, the workers found themselves unsatisfied with this agreement. There is a feeling of discontent, which could awaken at any moment.
  

It is important to add that the reaction of the oil workers is beginning to develop with a certain force in other sectors. The doctors, teachers, and some other sectors of public service workers have started mobilizations for wage demands; they have created assemblies where, apart from demanding wage increases, they have denounced the high level of deterioration of public services. In a recent assembly of doctors in Caracas, who were part of the Health Ministry, they identified themselves as "medical proletarians".

Its important to say that those who are for and against the government have tried to divide and polarize the movement, succeeding in many cases. Moreover the government mobilizes its organizations (bolivarian circles, communal councils, the social ombudsman, and armed groups when necessary) to intimidate and even physically assault the workers.

Another aspect which is no less important, is that the impoverished masses (many of whom are sympathizers of the government) express their indignation almost daily, protesting the housing shortage, the crime, the lack of services, etc., and ultimately the shortage of products such as milk, sugar, cooking oil, etc. In some cases, they have been repressed. This situation is in contrast to the high officials of the regime (called the "boliburguesia", or bolivarian bourgeoisie), who are strutting their opulence[2] with the most open frankness; they have made massive investments in armaments, which will be unleashed against the proletarians and the impoverished masses sooner rather than later; and they've invested major resources from the oil rent into developing the Venezuelan state's imperialist policy in the region.

This is the real face of "21st century socialism" promoted by Chavez and lauded by the Left, leftists, and "altermundialistas" [other-world-ists, supporters of the WSF], who seem to "drool" during their discussions on TeleSur, and who are sustained by the exploitation of the working masses, as is the entire bourgeois regime. The one difference is the "revolutionary" drivel, in the hope of confusing the proletarians inside and outside of Venezuela.

About the "reduction" of the working day

The "reduction" of the working day from 8 to 6 hours per day is considered in the constitutional reforms proposed by Chavez, along with other work-related "benefits", such as social security for the workers of the informal economy (which as in the rest of Latin America covers more than 50% of the labor force). These proposals, rather than seeking a real increase in the workers' quality of life, are the "cock-and-bull story", the big lie, with the hope of obtaining the support of the workers for the official proposal to reform the constitution.

The establishment has not said how this reduction in the working day will be realized; but many speculate that the un-worked hours will be utilized for political "formation" (indoctrination) or in so-called "socialist emulation" which the Fidelista cuban bourgeoisie invented so that the state could exploit the workers, with no pay. Furthermore, one of the objectives of the bourgeoisie (whether Chavista or not) is to discover how to charge taxes on the informal workers; by offering them the benefits of social security (which don't offer any real protection to the workers), the state will have greater control over them and will be able to impose taxes on them.

The principal objective of the constitutional reform (saturated with a big dose of hypocrisy, like every constitution in the world), is to strengthen the legal framework for greater state control over society, for more militarization, to legally justify the repression of the social movements, and to permit unlimited reelection of Chavez as president of the republic, among other things.

We can not lose sight of the fact that the Chavez government is a bourgeois government, in which the necessities and priorities of Capital prevail; in this sense, we can not be gullible (which we do not believe is your case), with respect to the Chavez government's search for the "greatest amount of social happiness", as the reformed text of the constitution puts it. It is precisely this deceitful propaganda that the Chavista movement pushes through their PR campaigns on the internal and international level, so that the workers of Venezuela and other countries will think that in Venezuela there is a real improvement in the living conditions of the workers and the population; this is the big lie sustained at the base by Chavista propaganda.

The capitalist crisis inexorably obligates every bourgeoisie, whether of the Right, the Center, or the Left, to attack the living conditions of the working class. In all of the countries where they have reduced the working day (France, Germany, etc.; including Venezuela, where at the beginning of the '90s they reduced the work day from 44 to 40 hours per week), this measure has not resulted in an improvement of the living conditions of the working class; completely to the contrary, the wages and social benefits have worsened, and precarious work has increased.

The intensification of the capitalist crisis will force the working class of Venezuela to fight against the state, as the oil, health, and education workers have done. In this way, positioned on its class terrain, the proletariat will be able to leave the trap of the political polarization which has kept its hands tied, and take part in the struggle of the world proletariat for the construction of real socialism.

Hoping we've responded to your questions.

The ICC, 19-11-07.

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[1] Venezuela has the highest inflation in the region, with an annual average of 20% during the last three years.

[2] During a recent episode of "Alo, Presidente!", a Sunday program which stars Chavez, he saw that it was necessary to criticize those "revolutionaries" who live only for Hummers (which cost hundreds of millions of Bolivars) and 18-year-aged Whiskey. What Chavez did not say is that he has given use of the high oil profits to himself, his family, and his close friends. The "Bolivarian Revolution", which arose under the flag of fighting corruption, bathes in the waters of corruption.