Through the following communiqué, Internacionalismo - ICC's section in Venezuela, analyzes the events in South America, following the appearance of Colombian troops in Ecuadorian territory.

The events

In the early hours of Saturday 2nd March the Colombian army bombs a FARC camp located in Ecuadorian territory, a few kilometers from the Colombian border. The objective of the mission is to eliminate the guerrilla leader nicknamed Raúl Reyes, an important member of FARC's secretariat, who dies along with 16 guerrilla fighters. The president of Colombia (Álvaro Uribe), who followed the whole operation throughout the night, alerted the president of Ecuador (Rafael Correo) of the action, who reacted in a moderate manner after listening to the explanations of the Colombian president.

On Sunday, Correa has a change of mood and decides to expel Colombia's ambassador from Ecuador, ordering a strengthening of the military presence on the border with Colombia. On Monday, Ecuador decides to break diplomatic relations with Colombia, accusing president Uribe of being a "bellicose", after the director of Colombia's police declared that documents gotten through the computers of the guerrilla fighters showed that there were links between FARC and the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela[1].

On Sunday 3rd March, Chavez, in his television show called "Aló, Presidente", after accusing Uribe of being a "gangster and an imperialist lackey", and threatening to send a Russian jet-bomber Sukho if the Colombian president decided to carry out a similar action on Venezuelan territory, orders the retirement of the personnel in the embassy of Bogotá and the mobilization of 10 military battalions towards the border with Colombia. On Monday, the Venezuelan chancellor declares the expulsion of the ambassador of Colombia; also on that same day (even if not made official), the Venezuelan government orders the closing of the border with Colombia[2].

As expected, this situation has created tension in the region and concern within the population, mainly on the Colombian-Venezuelan border.

Chavez heightens tensions

The reaction of Venezuela's government has been disproportionate, for Colombia hasn't carried out any kind of military action on Venezuelan territory. The commentators point out that Venezuela's reaction has been greater than Ecuador, the "invaded" country.

It is speculated that Chavez, after the first moderate reaction of Correa (who shares the Chavist project of the "Bolivarian revolution"), pressured the Ecuadorian president to break relations with Colombia and demonstrate a united front against Uribe's aggressions.

This exaggerated reaction of Venezuela is not at all surprising. The leftist government of Chavez has developed a political strategy to position itself as a regional power, based on the power given by its oil, and with it, it exploits a deepening anti-Americanism in order to make use of the social and political problems of the countries in the region and the geopolitical difficulties of USA in the world. This position has led Venezuela to support politically and financially leftist groups and parties in the region, some of them that are already in power, as with the case of Evo Morales in Bolivia or Correa in Ecuador. Chavez's reaction and his pressure on Ecuador are no surprise, since Colombia's operation has revealed the support both countries give to the Colombian guerrillas, permitting the setting up of camps on their territories to evade the Colombian military. The decision of Venezuela's government to mobilize troops towards the border with Colombia was a response to the real possibility of the Colombian army attacking guerrilla camps in Venezuelan territory.

Chavez has had continuous political and diplomatic clashes with Colombia, which has been transformed into the USA's most important military base in the region, with the excuse of attacking the guerrilla and drug-trafficking, through Plan Colombia - which began in 2000.

As a way of trying to destabilize the Colombian government, Chavez has given increasingly open support to guerrilla organizations (FARC and ELN); he also gives political (and maybe financial) support to the Polo Democrático Alternativo (Democratic Alternative Pole), a Colombian leftist party that defends the Bolivarian project against the Uribist party in power.

The Chavez-Uribe confrontation has maintained itself more or less in an unstable equilibrium until November of the last year, when Chavez was considered as possible mediator for the "humanitarian exchange" of various hostages in the hands of FARC[3], for militants of that same organization. We should not forget that the inexplicable decision of the Colombian government of placing Chavez as a mediator for the exchange of hostages for FARC militants may be part of a strategy of the Colombian bourgeoisie and USA to know better the maneuverings of FARC and weakening it geo-politically, in the way that is happening right now.

It is a fact that the guerrillas have weakened due to Uribe's determined actions[4], a situation that explains the insistence of Chavez defending it as a fighting force, which would open the doors to its transformation into a political party. Colombia's recent action in Ecuador could form part of the necessity of blocking this last option and aborting the unilateral handing-out of hostages to Chavez, and to make public the links of the Venezuelan government and FARC. The Colombian government, making use of their intelligence (supported by highly advanced American military technology), has denounced many times the existence of guerrilla camps in Colombia's neighboring countries, particularly in Venezuela and Ecuador. In fact, some months ago, president Uribe had already denounced that the guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes was hiding in Ecuadorian territory. It seems like Colombia's government was just waiting for the right moment to eliminate him[5].

The US and the Colombian bourgeoisie know about the weakening of Chavez at the internal level, which was reflected by the defeat of the referendum in December 2nd of last year, the intention of which was to make re-election indefinite. The masses that put their hopes in him are becoming disillusioned. This is why Chavez's government is trying relentlessly to lead the population in an aggressive campaign against the exterior enemy (the US and now Colombia), as a way to turn the masses' attention away from their real everyday problems (lack of basic goods, crime, unemployment, etc).

USA's geopolitical strategy has been to leave Chavismo to debilitate by itself progressively, that is why the American government has avoided falling into continuous provocations; a situation that has lead Chavez to align his nationalist, rhetorical artillery against Uribe. The US and the "more conscious" bourgeoisies of the region know that the high oil profits will not be enough to sustain the voracity of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie (called the "Bolibourgeoisie"), which needs copious amounts of resources for their licit and illicit businesses (a product of the high level of corruption that reigns in the Bolivarian lines); at the same time, sustaining an anti-American geo-politics (which in the Cold War was financed by the USSR) costs many thousands of dollars. By the same token, maintaining the populist politics needs large amounts of spending - a reason for why these politics have weakened since 2006 (something that the most impoverished sectors are really feeling).

Due to the social unease[6], the confrontation against Colombia and the bellicose mobilizations have not had the support of Venezuela's population. The calls of Chavez, of the National Assembly and the high bureaucrats of Chavismo for the mobilization of the population towards the border, have been met with indifference, opposition to war or the thought that both governments should find a better way to solve their conflicts. The government has received the support of the recent-lumpen ex-bureaucrat Lina Ron, who has put her 2,000 supporters at the service of the "commander"!!; these form part of the paid henchmen that the chavismo uses to repress its opposition, and the masses or workers who protest or fight for their conditions. On the other hand, while the Colombian bourgeoisie has formed a united front at the side of Uribe; in the case of Venezuela, the sectors of the opposing bourgeosie and its parties have formed columns against Chavez.

There is another factor no less important that works against the bellicose tendencies of chavismo: the division in the armed forces - a reflection of the division that the different factions of the bourgeoisie have inculcated at the level of the civilian population. While it is not expressed in an open manner, it is evident that there are military sectors that are in disagreement with the relations the government has with the guerrillas: the latter have attacked the Venezuelan military forces on many occasions, leaving many military and civil deaths. According to the declarations of the recent minister of defense Raúl Baduel, who since last year has flipped-flopped to the Opposition, and who has an ascendancy in the armed forces, the government doesn't have the support of the middle ranks - the ones who are in charge of the troops.

The dynamic of decomposition

Even though various countries[7] and even the OAS itself try to lower the tensions in the region, it is evident that it is convenient for Venezuela to prolong the crisis. In this sense, the pressure on Ecuador will continue: at the moment that this communiqué is being written, President Correa finishes a visit in Caracas, a moment that him and Chavez used to light-up the flames of the conflict. After that, Correa goes to Nicaragua, a moment that president Daniel Ortega used to break diplomatic relations with Colombia.

It is possible that the conflict would not transcend the mediated scare-mongering of both sides. However, there exists a context of decomposition that makes it impossible to predict what can happen:

• The US, through Plan Colombia, has introduced factors of instability in the region that are irreversible: Colombia has been militarily equipped and has a highly trained armed force, which according the specialists, is about four times bigger than the ones of Venezuela and Ecuador together; supported by the most advanced war technology. A situation that creates a military imbalance in the region.
• With Uribe's decision of denouncing Chavez before the International Criminal Court for the financing of terrorist groups, it is possible that Colombia would use the recent events to support itself and continue denouncing and lowering the prestige of Chavez at the international level; for example, making public the support of the Venezuelan government for FARC and putting forward proof of guerrilla camps located in Venezuelan territory.
• The Chavistas, in their "forward-retreat", could use whatever means to justify a military confrontation with Colombia. In one of his recent declarations, Chavez threatened many Colombian enterprises with nationalisation.

Internacionalismo

March 2008.

NOTE: On Friday 7th March, at the same time of the reunion of leaders of various countries in Latin America in Dominican Republic, Uribe, Chavez, Correa, and Ortega ended hugging each other; which supposedly puts an end to the conflict. We all know that politicians are used to hugging each other while hiding a dagger for their adversaries. From our point of view, Uribe left really clear his plans against his adversaries, who did not have other option left except hugging him. It's possible that the tensions will lower themselves momentarily, but the confrontational situation is still present. Chavez needs his external enemy; in his support, Ecuador has decided not to restart, for now, diplomatic relations with Colombia.

[1] Some of the evidence found concerned the transference of $300 million and armaments from Venezuela to FARC. The evidence also pointed out that FARC gave $50,000 to Chavez in 1992 when the latter was in prison after his failed coup d'etat.

[2] Colombia is Venezuela's second most important commercial partner, just after the US. Through the border with Colombia comes 30% of the country's imports, and within them an important percentage of foodstuffs. Closing the border would heighten the scarcity of foodstuffs in the country, which has become deeper since the end of 2007. This fact is an expression of the irrationality and "forward-retreat" of Chavismo.

[3] The whole deal with the "humanitarian exchange" has been followed by a stream of hypocrisies from different factions of the bourgeoisie, because all of them try to make use of the situation (particularly Chavez and FARC) for their own self-service; many countries have formed part of this "humanitarian" party (like France). All of them don't really care about the lives of the hostages. We should also mention that many of the hostages form part of bourgeois institutions (parliament, political parties, etc.). We should denounce in a firm manner the exploitation of the masses' sentimentalism in favor of the bourgeoisie's geopolitical interests.

[4] FARC's numbers have diminished from 17,000 to 11,000 since Uribe became president in 2002. Close to 7,000 guerrilla fighters have died, and more than 46,000 elements from FARC, Army of National Liberation (ELN) and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) have become demobilized. Source: El Nacional, 3-9-08

[5] According to the most recent news, the exact location of the guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes was obtained after he received a call from Chavez on his satellite phone.

[6] The protests of the population are becoming more frequent. In some cities there have been riots due to the scarcity of food. The protests against murders are more frequent. Since last year, workers have mobilized for better social conditions and wages: workers in sectors like oil, metal, tyre manufacturing, health, etc.

[7] One of the countries that can play an important role is Brazil, since Lula is the "friend" of all countries in conflict, particularly of Chavez. France, which has been seen meddling around because of the hostage Betancourt, has had an ambiguous position that has deserved critiques: first it lamented the incident due to the role that Reyes played in the mediation for the liberation of hostages, expressing a confusing attitude concerning FARC; afterwards, it found necessary to explain that its relation with Reyes only existed until the middle of last year. In recent declarations it "threatened" FARC to label them as terrorists if Ingrid Betancourt is hurt.

Fidel Castro, leader of the Stalinist regime in Cuba for many years, died on the 25th November 2016. As per usual, this has triggered a paroxym of praise and condemnation from the bourgeois media. In particular, those on the left-wing of capitalism's political machine, have taken the opportunity to reignite the myths about Castro and Cuban "socialism". For us, there is nothing to be praised in the brutal regime which, under the leadership of its Russian master, was an eager contributor to the butchery of workers around the world during the Cold War.

Accordingly, we are republishing an article written back in 2008 by a comrade from the Dominican Republic, when Castro retired as leader of the Cuban state. At a moment when the bourgeois world order seems to be lurching into a new phase of disorder and misery, it is more tempting than ever to seek solace in the false illusions of leftism. For this reason, it is vital that the working class understand the true nature of Castro and his ilk: counter-revolutionary imperialists that repressed and slaughtered workers around the globe in service to the brutal dictatorship of capitalism.

In the week of February 18th 2008, the Cuban "president", Fidel Castro, announced that he no longer aspired to lead the Cuban capitalist state. This has motivated the right wing bourgeoisie, through their speakers, to announce a complete end to communism and the end of the Cuban revolution. In the same way as they did with the fall of the Eastern Bloc, they try to confuse the workers, without realizing that they - the bourgeoisie - are celebrating their own burial. With their speculation on possible disappearance of the Cuban model, it is not the proletariat who loses - it is capitalism. On the other side of the fence, the left wing of capital, with sergeant Hugo Chavez at the front, assures us that the revolution continues. To counter this nonsense that aims to confuse the working class, we have to clarify a few things.

In January 1959 there wasn't a real social revolution in Cuba, but an exchange of ruling factions, with the ascent of leaders from the rural Castro-Guevarist and cienfuegist revolt to power, overthrowing sergeant Batista. Things turned around from the right wing of capital, manifested in the military dictatorship, to the left of capital; the latter spearheading a cluster of reforms and nationalizations, that far from elevating the level of consciousness and proletarian struggle, accommodated them to capitalism. By the same token, the promises of a change of situation for the majority felt short. There was a relative betterment in education and hygiene - which was made in the interest of Cuban capital since it exports to many countries educators and medics - but the rationing that has persisted through half a century demonstrates a dramatic lack of basic necessities. Anyone who wishes to acquire something minimally decent has to pay for it through the ridiculously high prices in special shops which cater for tourists or the black market. The privileges of an exploitative minority persist at a level even more ostentatious than in the times of Batista: the members of the so called "Communist" Party, the high-ranking military functionaries, etc. have access to all types of luxuries that deeply contrast with the deprivation and suffering of the majority.

In Cuba there wasn't a revolution. The regime changed hands, and the taking of power, instead of being made through parliament, was made through insurrection. Capitalism is still capitalism. They only changed their dress-code: the liberal clothes of suit and tie were replaced by the green uniform of men with beards.

Another aspect is the pretended "anti-imperialist" character of Mr. Castro. In the first place, any capitalist state in order to survive is necessarily imperialist, since it has to make others submit and has to supply itself with the military, economic, political, ideological and cultural means that would permit it to defend its interests in the midst of the world imperialist jungle. This is why in Cuba the majority of the country's resources are concentrated in the maintenance of a fairly powerful army, which has waged wars in Africa (for example Angola) under the pretext of "anti-imperialism." In the same manner, Cuba has promoted itself as a "socialist country" through a powerful propaganda apparatus. With these means - obviously limited because of the small size of the country- the Cuban regime has tried to carve its own niche in the struggle nations wage against each other.

Fidel is certainly taking advantage of the discontent with the USA, presenting this country as the great empire, due to the contradictions he had with this nation, but at the same time he denounced American imperialism, he praised soviet social-imperialism; now he supports the Bolivarian imperialism of sergeant Chavez. Please, tell me then if there is a bad imperialism and a good one; would it be something like a terrorist being dedicated to the suppression of terrorism?

At the beginning of the "Cuban Revolution" - 1959 and 1970 - it was Fidel Castro who, in that famous speech to the UN, confessed to not being a communist, but that his attempts of trying to get a reasonable deal with the powerful northern neighbor failed. Then, he changed his coat and allied to Russian imperialism. Consequently, the old Cuban "Communist" party was forced to merge with the "July 26 movement" and constituted itself as a new "Communist" Party that, since then, has ruled as the only party.

The Cuban regime has loudly proclaimed itself as "anti-imperialist" reducing the label of "imperialism" to exclusively the United States. Humanity is fed up with the savagery and destruction of Yankee imperialism; however imperialism is not combated by states that are supposedly "anti-imperialist," but through the independent and internationalist struggle of the proletariat. There is no such thing as "good" or "bad" imperialism. There aren't "good" states that pay allegiance to the law and "humanism" on the one hand, and states that have the monopoly on tyranny, militarism, and barbarism on the other. To combat imperialism through a state, in the way that Castro and the Bolivarian Chavez proposes to us, would be like trusting the fight against terrorism to a terrorist.

Another great lie that has been perpetuated is the one of "communist" Fidel or "socialist" Cuba. The first thing to evaluate in this case, is if in Cuba there exists surplus value, wage-labor, private property, and if there can exist in a capitalist world an island of socialism.

In Cuba there exists wage-labor and the exploitation of man by man. Instead of there being a classical capitalist class there is a bureaucracy that administers the state against the majority. What has happened was just a juridical change in property, changing it from particular to bureaucratic; the title of the property has passed from the particulars to the State, but it still is private property since the great majority is deprived of every medium of existence, and to survive has to accept working everyday in the conditions imparted by the Boss.  The only difference is that, while in other countries the boss is Mr. Someone from Company Something, in Cuba the boss is Mr. State.

Fidel Castro - and now Chavez, Morales etc. - reproduce the great Stalinist lie: making people believe that nationalizations were a step to socialism - trying to persuade that socialism in one country is a step towards socialism or a variant of socialism, while in reality, it is nothing more than a facet of capitalism: state-capitalism.

Vladimir, February 2008.

On March 8th, all the feminist groups once again commemorated International Women's Day with the full blessing of the radical petty bourgeoisie represented in the various left wing groups (the Socialist Party in particular). Once again this day, associated with the struggle of working women, will be perverted and transformed into a giant democratic and reformist masquerade. Like Labour Day (May 1st), March 8th has been recuperated by the bourgeoisie and has become an institution of state capitalism.

In the Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (1887), Engels had already denounced the oppression of women in affirming that with the end of matriarchal societies and the rise of patriarchal society, woman had become "the proletarian of the man". In 1891, Auguste Bebel, in his Woman and Socialism continued the work of Engels in a profound historical study of the female condition.

From the end of the 19th century, the ‘woman question' was closely linked to the working class struggle for the emancipation of the whole of humanity. The conditions of poverty and exploitation suffered by women workers pushed them unavoidably into the vanguard of the proletarian struggle at the start of the twentieth century.

Women's struggle within the workers' movement in the twentieth century.

March 8th has its origins in the demonstrations of textile workers in New York that took place on March 8th 1857 and were suppressed by the police (though apparently there is no American workers' movement archive with any evidence of the event).

The international movement of socialist women emerged in Germany in the main party of the working class, the SPD, under the impetus of Clara Zetkin:[1] in 1890 she established the review Die Gleichheit (Equality), with the support of Rosa Luxemburg, which advocated the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, replacing it with a world communist society. Across the world, in both Western Europe and the United States, women workers were beginning to mobilise against their conditions of exploitation. They demanded the reduction of the working day, the same wages as men, the abolition of child labour and an improvement in their living conditions. Along with these economic demands, they also raised political demands, notably woman's right to the vote (though this political demand would subsequently be submerged into and confused with that of the bourgeois women's movement known as ‘the suffragettes').

But it was from 1907 in particular that women workers and socialists would find themselves in the vanguard of the struggle against capitalist barbarism faced with the harbingers of the First World War.

On August 17th of that year Clara Zetkin announced the first conference of the Women's Socialist International in Stuttgart. 58 delegates from all over Europe and the United States attended and adopted a resolution on women's right to the vote. This resolution would be adopted by the Stuttgart congress of the SPD that followed this conference. At the time when women's wages were a half that of male workers doing the same work, there were many women's organisations and the vast majority of them had been actively involved in all the workers' struggles at the turn of the century.

There were mass demonstrations of women textile workers in New York in 1908 and 1909. They demanded "bread and roses", (the roses symbolised improvements in living conditions beyond mere survival), the abolition of child labour and better wages.

In 1910, the Women's Socialist International launched an appeal for peace. On March 8th 1911, on International Women's Day, a million women demonstrated all across Europe. A few days later on March 25th, more than 140 women workers perished in a fire in the Triangle textile factory in New York owing to a lack of safety measures. This drama would further galvanise the women's revolt against their conditions of exploitation and against the denial to them of a political voice in parliament. In 1913, all across the world, women were demanding the right to vote. In Britain, the bourgeois ‘suffragettes' were also adopting a more radical stance. 

But it would be in Tsarist Russia, particularly, that the struggle of women would give an impetus to the revolutionary movement of the whole working class. Between 1912 and 1914, Russian women workers organised clandestine meetings and declared their opposition to the imperialist butchery. After war broke out, women from all across Europe would join them.

In 1915 the French army's open offensive at the front initiated a terrible butchery: 350,000 soldiers were massacred in the trenches.  At home, the women suffered increased exploitation in having to keep the national economy running. Reactions began to explode against the war and women were the first to mobilise. On March 8th 1915, Alexandra Kollontai[2] organised a demonstration of women against the war at Christiana, near Oslo. Clara Zetkin called a new Women's International Conference. This was a prelude to the Zimmerwald Conference that re-grouped all those opposed to the war. On April 15th 1915, 1136 women from 12 different countries assembled in La Haye.

In Germany, particularly from 1916, two of the greatest women figures in the western workers' movement, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, would play a decisive role in the foundation of the German Communist Party, the KPD. In the United States, Emma Goldman, anarchist militant (and friend of journalist John Reed, a founder member of the American Communist Party), led a bitter struggle against the imperialist war. In 1917 she would be imprisoned (and was considered to be "the most dangerous woman in the United States") before being expelled to Russia.

In Russia, it would be women workers who would lead the triumphant march of the proletariat to the revolution. On March 8th (February 23rd in the Gregorian calendar), women workers from the textile factories in Petrograd went on strike spontaneously and took to the streets. They demanded ‘bread and peace'. They called for their sons and husbands to be returned from the front. "Disregarding our instructions, the women workers from several mills went on strike and sent delegations to the engineering workers to ask for their support... It didn't occur to a single worker that this could be the first day of the revolution." (Trotsky History of the Russian Revolution). So the slogan ‘bread and peace' that was a spark to the Russian Revolution was initiated by the women workers of Petrograd, and it gave a lead to the workers from the Putilov factories and the whole of the working class to join the movement.

The recuperation of the women's movement by bourgeois democracy

It wasn't a gamble for the German bourgeoisie to grant women the right to vote on November 12th 1918, the day after it signed the Armistice. It was no surprise that in the country where the international movement of socialist women was born, in the country where the greatest female figures in the workers' movement at the start of the 20th century, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, were militants, that the ruling class would try and break the revolutionary spirit of women by granting this demand when parliament had become an empty shell for the working class. With capitalism's entry into its period of its decadence, it was no longer practical to struggle for reforms and for the right to vote, but only for the overthrow of capitalist order.

The First World War had opened a new period of history: "that of wars and revolutions", as the Communist International had declared in 1919.

From the beginning of the 1920s, the women's movement followed the course of the proletarian struggle; it entered a dynamic of reflux and was rapidly absorbed into the capitalist state. It would become more and more distinct and separate from the proletarian movement and become an inter-classist movement. The question of women's sexual oppression was raised independently of the conditions of women's exploitation in the mills and factories, sowing the illusion that women could indeed be emancipated within a society based on exploitation and the search for profit. From the start of the 1920s the women's ‘liberation' movement started to focus its attention on birth control and abortion rights, particularly in the United States. 

From the mid 1920s in Germany, the women's movement was rapidly derailed onto the terrain of the struggle against Nazism.

In the other European countries, notably France and Spain, women continued to demand the right to vote while allowing themselves to get sucked up into anti-fascism, an ideology that was going to lead to millions of proletarians being recruited into the Second World War.

The women's movement was very quickly recuperated by all kinds of agents of the capitalist state, such as the UFCS (Union Féminine Civique et Sociale) in France and the Catholic women's organisations that called for women to struggle not against the capitalist system as a whole, but against colonialism and fascism. 

Though women's right to vote was still not on the statute book in France, Léon Blum nevertheless introduced women into the government for the first time. On June 4th 1936, three women were appointed Under-Secretaries of State (Cécile Brunschwig, Irène Joliot-Curie et Suzanne Lacore). It was presented it as a ‘radical' move, allowing the left wing capitalist parties to mobilise large numbers of women behind the flag of the Popular Front and getting them involved in the preparations for the Second World War.

During the Occupation, large number of women joined the Resistance, notably behind the flag of the Stalinists of the PCF. De Gaulle would eventually reward their ‘bravery' and ‘patriotism' by granting them the right to vote on March 23rd 1944 so that they would be able... to elect their own exploiters from the right wing or the left wing. 

However, just when women obtained the right to vote in France, the PCF, with its sickening chauvinism, was glorifying in the Liberation of Paris. In 1945, women who had committed the crime of having sexual relations with the enemy (‘the boche') had their heads shaved. They were accused of having tarnished the Tricolor (the French flag) and of having ‘collaborated' with the enemy. They were forced to parade in public and exposed to public ridicule.

Feminism: a sexist and reactionary ideology

At the beginning of the 1970s, the women's movement no longer had any characteristics of the workers' movement. The Women's Liberation Movement was the new voice of feminism and rejected any idea of women joining political parties. In the name of ‘anti-chauvinism', men were forbidden to attend many of their meetings. The movement called itself ‘autonomous' and strengthened the illusion that it was only women that were oppressed, not by the capitalist system, but by men in general. They contributed to a sexist viewpoint whereby feminists didn't just demand the same ‘rights' as men but considered men as their enemies, their real oppressors. Numerous ‘feminists' took up the Don Quiotesque struggle for women's ‘sexual liberation' without the least consideration for the economic foundations of their oppression. The feminist movement had broken definitively with the tradition of the women's struggle inside the workers' movement. It had become a reactionary ideology of the petty bourgeoisie that has no historical perspective, and had blossomed on the streets of May 68. And it's no accident that the feminists had chosen the colour mauve as their emblem, the same colour as that of the ‘suffragettes' at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1975 the feminist movement incorporated prostitutes who were demanding the right to continue selling their bodies "freely" (living off men's sexual impoverishment) without having to suffer police repression.

A mascarade in the service of capital

In 1977, the United Nations gave official recognition to International Women's Day and adopted a resolution inviting each country to dedicate the day to the celebration of ‘women's rights and international peace'. As regards to the ‘peace', it's enough to refer to the numerous massacres that are perpetrated under the aegis of the great democratic powers to show what value is served by noble ‘resolutions' from the den of the imperialist brigands that is the UN. As regards the international day for women's rights, it is nothing but a charade to mystify working class women and to deflect them from struggling as workers exploited by the capitalist class.

In France it was the left (and the PS in particular) with Mitterrand as President that became the main advocate of feminist ideology. In 1982 under the Mauroy government with its Minister for Women's Rights, March 8th became an institution of the bourgeois democratic state.

Since then, every fraction of the left of capital has contributed to creating a multitude of feminist associations that serve to dissolve women workers into the mass of women ‘in general', to involve them in campaigns where women from all layers and classes of society can make common cause as ‘women' without distinction of their class interests.

Today's electoral campaigns (with Hillary Clinton as a candidate for US president, following that of Ségolène Royal in France) want us to kid us into believing that having women in charge of government could possibly bring an end to the brutal attacks against the working class. They would also have us believe that a woman head of state would mean fewer barbaric wars; ‘a woman' would be less ‘violent', more ‘humane' and more ‘peaceful' than men.

All this chatter is nothing but pure mystification. Capitalist domination isn't a problem of sexuality but of social class. When bourgeois women take control of the state, they carry out exactly the same capitalist policies as their male predecessors. They would all follow in the steps of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, who is remembered for her leadership in the Falklands War in 1982 and for having let 10 IRA hunger strikers demanding political prisoner status die around the same time. They all  behave the same, like Sarkozy's associates, Michèle Alliot-Marie, Rachida Dati, Valérie Pécresse, Fadela Amara and their consorts. The bourgeoisie can't contemplate any difference between the sexes in the management of its national economy. And the boss of the bosses' organisation, Laurence Parisot, also does a good job for the bourgeoisie, as her predecessors from the ‘stronger sex' did before him.

In 1917, immediately before the October Revolution, Lenin wrote:

"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, receiving their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonise them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the ‘consolation' of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it" (State and Revolution).

What happened to the revolutionaries has happened to May 1st. And it has happened to March 8th (international women's day) just as it happened to May 1st.

One of the most pernicious weapons of the bourgeoisie, as the dominant class, is its capacity to turn the symbols that once belonged to the working class in the past back against it. Thus it was with unions and workers' parties as it is with May 1st and international women's day.

Since the end of prehistory, women have always suffered the yoke of oppression. But this oppression cannot be abolished under capitalism. Only the arrival of a world communist society can offer women this perspective. They can only free themselves by actively participating in the general movement of the working class to emancipate the whole of humanity.

Sylvestre (12/02/08)

[1] Clara Zetkin, born in 1887, was actively involved in the foundation of the Second International. Faced with the opportunism gangrening the life of her party, the SPD, Clara Zetkin allied herself with her friend Rosa Luxemburg on the left wing of the party. She participated in the revolutionary movement against the First World War. In 1915, she was a founder member of the Spartakist League at the side of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. She was a delegate of the Communist International at the Tours Congress when the French Communist Party was founded.

[2] Alexandra Kollontaï, born in 1872, was one of the more senior female figures in the Bolshevik Party in 1917. Having joined the Menshevik Party after the Russian Social Democracy congress in 1903, she fought against the war from 1914 and rejoined the party of Lenin in 1915. She participated in the Russian Revolution and was the first woman in the world to have a role in government after the October Revolution. Thanks to her activity and to the revolutionary women workers' movement, voting rights and equal wages were won in Russia and in 1920 the right to abortion. From 1918, Alexandra Kollontaï more and more opposed the direction of the Bolshevik Party and was be involved in the foundation of an internal fraction, the Workers' Opposition, in 1920.

We want to reaffirm our statement entitled: "The student movement in Venezuela: the young try to break free from the false alternative between Chavism and the opposition" 8/7/07

At our public meetings, via e-mails and forums (one of them being Revleft[1]), we have received criticism as much from outside as inside Venezuela. We are accused of giving a proletarian character to a petty-bourgeois movement with nothing to do with a real proletarian struggle, or of supporting the children of the rich of the country who oppose the Chavist regime.

We reaffirm our position for the following reasons:

- we explicitly entitled our article "student movement" in order to differentiate this movement, from the mobilisation of the students in the last decades (mainly before the rise of Chavismo) which were characterised by violent confrontations with the police, burning of cars, etc. The May 2007[2] movement was marked by a radical difference to those movements: it avoided the sterile confrontations that the leftists and anarchists applaud;

- the most noticeable difference with the past movements was the central role played by the assemblies that took place in various universities at the beginning of the movement. Some secondary school students also participated in the assemblies, where the actions to be taken and how to carry them out were debated. The assemblies were open to participation by lecturers and workers from the universities, and in some students sympathetic to the government participated;

- another important feature of the movement at its beginnings was the effort to distance itself from the politics of polarization that have flourished during the Chávez government. The movement was not only strongly critical of the government; during various events called by the students it also refused to take the word of the leaders of the sectors opposing Chavismo;

- the movement was the real expression of the social discontent that exists in Venezuelan society. The demands of the movement were fundamentally political, denouncing unemployment, poverty, the level of crime, etc[3]. The student movement in some ways was the prelude to more important expressions of social discontent during 2007 and into 2008: at the level of the working class there were struggles (oil, health, railway construction in the central region of the country, tyre makers, SIDOR steel workers, etc); also at the level of the workers in Chavismo's so-called "missions" such as in the Barrio Adentro in the health sector, which demanded fixed contracts and less precarious working; and the population in general (including those sympathetic to Chavismo), confronted with the lack of services, high levels of crime, the lack of housing, the scarcity of food, etc;

- in our position we showed that proletarian factors were expressed within the movement, in part due to the fact that many students at the public and private universities are children of proletarian families, and also many of them are working for formal or informal wages, in order to pay for their studies and to help their families. Those who wanted to deny this factor pretend that the majority of students are from the rich classes of the country. Official statistics disprove this. 75% of university students in the country attended public universities which are free (from long before Chávez came to power) and to which only children from families on lower incomes have access. For reference, at the Central University of Venezuela, the most important in the country (with nearly 13% of all those who graduate in the country's universities), more than 90% of the students come from the Municipio Libertador which takes in the central-western region of Caracas, where more than 60% of the capital live, the majority on low incomes[4]. An important percentage of the students in this municipality also study in the private universities. Unless they have scholarships, many of their families have gone into debt in order to pay for their studies;

- rather than trying to look at the student movement from the sociological point of view or from that of past student mobilisations, the reality is that it is the economic crisis in Venezuela (as in other countries) that has made the poor poorer, and impoverished the middle layers, and has led a situation where if their children manage to graduate from university, for the most part they are unable to get a job paying more than a qualified worker. This situation has got worse under the Chavista regime and its "Socialism for the 21st Century" which seeks to massively extended poverty and precariousness, through "levelling" society downwards;

- according to the incessant campaigns of the government, based on the typical methods of the left, society is divided by social struggles between "the poor and the rich"[5], thus hiding the fundamental division of society: between the proletariat and capital. Behind the campaign that says that university students are the children of the rich is the necessity for the government to try and increase its control of the universities in order to put in place its populist project of the massification of higher education, which it has not been able to impose until now because this sector is controlled by opposition forces and because of the discrediting of the government within the universities. It is possible that many of the critics of our position have been influenced by sympathy for Chavismo, a government that condemns and tries to criminalise any movement of genuine protest.

In no way do we deny that the student sector, due to its characteristics, is strong penetrated by petty bourgeois ideology. However no social movement, including by the workers, is free from the penetration by bourgeois or petty bourgeois ideology, which in Venezuela is expressed through the poison of polarization between fractions of capital, which is aimed at derailing genuine discontent towards capitalist aims. The future development of student movements and other social movements will depend upon their capacity to unite with workers' struggles.

Faced with the absence of widespread workers' struggles in Venezuela (though we are seeing the beginnings of this) the movement of the students was diluted into the bourgeois confrontation between the government and opposition, into the choice between declaring itself in favour or against the constitutional reform proposed by Chávez in 2007. Today, various leaders of the movement are candidates in the coming mayoral and governorship elections to be held in October 2008.

Nevertheless, this does not negate the characteristics that the movement had in May 2007, nor will it stop the development of new movements in this sector, since the economic and social crisis is not only continuing but worsening at an accelerating pace.

Internacionalismo, April 2007

Section of the International Communist Current in Venezuela

[1] See www.revleft.com/vb/venezuela-student-discussion [7]

[2] Before we published our position, a leaflet in support of the movement was distributed by a sympathizer of the ICC, a student of the Central University of Venezuela, which we have published on our website: https://en.internationalism.org/wr/307/ven-students-leaflet [8]

[3] The opposition media highlighted more the demands against the closure of the RCTV television channel or for freedom of expression; whilst the official media criminalised the movement, accusing it of being promoted by the "oligarchy" and "imperialism"

[4] According to the figures of the Planning Office of the University Sector in 200; see www.cnu.gov.ve [9].

[5] One has to ask in which universities do the children of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie study. Many of them for certain study in the best private universities in the country and abroad, faced with the progressive deterioration of education in the public universities.