Between 7 and 15 August, the Revolutionary Communist Group joined more than 17,000 delegates from 144 countries for the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas, Venezuela under the slogan ‘for peace and solidarity, we struggle against imperialism and war’. Helen Yaffe reports.
The Festival is organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and first took place in July 1947, when 17,000 youth from 71 countries met in post-war Prague, after two imperialist world wars within one generation, raising the slogan ‘youth, unite in the struggle for a stable and durable peace’. The Festival adopted an anti-imperialist line in Cuba in 1978.
After the collapse of the Soviet bloc 1989-91, the Festival was successfully revived in Cuba in 1997, despite the Miami-based terrorists’ attack (see FRFI 139). The period leading up to the Festival in Algeria 2001 saw the ascendancy of social-democracy. In Britain New Labour chirped on about the ‘third way’ and throughout Europe and Latin America social democratic governments reconciled themselves with global capitalism while revolutionary movements suffered defeats throughout the world. Only after a political battle within the international organising committee did the Festival again adopt an anti-imperialist stance as 6,500 youth from 110 countries met in Algeria.
Then in September 2001, just weeks after the Festival, the US came under attack from reactionary terrorist forces it had helped to create. Imperialism increased its offensive, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq. In response to that offensive and the total failure of neo-liberal globalisation for the oppressed majority, anti-imperialist forces grew. How quickly the world can change.
The 16th World Festival of Youth and Students took place in a principal battle ground between imperialism and the oppressed. Since Hugo Chavez was elected President in 1998 he has clawed back power from the ruling class, which is linked to US capital, gradually socialising the means of production and redistributing oil wealth for social investment in a country where 80% of the population lives in poverty. 14 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chavez has declared that the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela will take a socialist path.
The themes for discussion at the Festival were: 1) peace, war and imperialism; 2) education, science, culture, communication and technology; 3) employment, economy and development; and 4) democracy, liberty, national sovereignty and human rights. A day was dedicated to each continent, and meetings organised for social sectors including: young workers and trade unionists, entrepreneurs, indigenous, religious, journalists, immigrants, disabled people, athletes, and parliamentarians.
Every national delegation could organise meetings for inclusion in the official programme. There were meetings about countries engaged in anti-imperialist struggle, for example; the Basque Country, Western Sahara, Palestine and North Korea, and countries where revolutionary movements are challenging state power, such as Bolivia and Nepal.
The British delegation
Contrast this revolutionary backdrop with the Alice-in-Wonderland British delegation. Officially with 97 delegates, of whom just one third joined the contingent at the inauguration march. The group around the British national committee was dominated by young representatives from the Labour Party and social-democratic groups linked to it. Representatives and apologists of an imperialist Labour Party, a government illegally occupying Iraq, attending an anti-imperialist Festival!
The British national committee organised two workshops; on trade unionism and on British imperialism. The RCG delegates participated in the workshops, confronting our compatriots about the racist and imperialist history of the Labour Party, the lie of ‘socialist’ Old Labour, and the complicity of the trade union movement in the exploitation of the oppressed world. We argued for a complete break with Labour in order to build a real movement against war, racism, capitalism, imperialism, and to truly defend the working class and oppressed.
In revolutionary Latin America, we were among a radicalising majority and our contributions were received with respect and solidarity from anti-imperialists around the world, pleased to hear the voice of genuine socialists from the oldest imperialist country in the world.
Revolutionary youth of Venezuela
Throughout the event we were impressed with the political level of the young Venezuelan delegates and the hundreds of volunteers assisting at the Festival. The more than 3,000 Venezuelan delegates were chosen by their peers in workplaces, communities and social and political organisations. Their ranks included 90 youth from indigenous communities, 100 peasants, 500 from social programmes or missions established to tackle poverty, 150 cadets and soldiers and 20 disabled youth.
These Venezuelan youth are more than just ‘Chavistas’– followers of the charismatic President. They were political cadre of the Revolution. They understand that Venezuela has embarked on a process of transition to socialism, and they recognise the intensity of class war this involves. They understand the need to foster popular participation in the Revolution, to arm the people with knowledge and guns to defend the basic welfare gains they have already received. One young volunteer announced that ‘although this has been a peaceful Revolution so far, the people are armed and will defend it’.
Socialism for the 21st century
During a conference about the Bolivarian Revolution and the construction of socialism in the 21st century members of Chavez’s government described the Revolution as at a juncture between two systems, in transition from capitalism to socialism and talked about creating the conditions for this advance. The speakers urged a return to the classic texts of Marx and Lenin and a re-examination of the Trotsky-Stalin polemic, a constructive assessment of the socialist countries and the need to build a humanitarian socialism, democratic and representative.
‘Cuba, Venezuela, una sola bandera’
The British delegation had arrived in Caracas from Havana with 1,800 delegates from Cuba, including 500 international students who study for free on the island. At 1am in an airport in Caracas, we were welcomed with a party, Cuban and Venezuelan flags waved to the slogan Cuba, Venezuela, una sola bandera (Cuba, Venezuela, just one flag) chanted above the music.
Since October 2000 Cuba and Venezuela have had cooperation agreements and now operate under the Latin American Bolivarian Alternative (ALBA), which, among a complex of agreements, exchanges oil supplies for Cuba with the supply of thousands of Cuban medical personnel and educators for Venezuela (see FRFI 183). The concrete results of this co-operation are the social welfare projects: Operation Milagro (eye operations for Venezuelans to recover sight in Cuba), Barrio Adentro I & II (medical provision), Mission Robinson (basic literacy), Mission Rivas (secondary school education), Mission Sucre (university/professional education) among others.
Today Cuba has 25,845 health professionals assisting over 85 million people in 66 different countries. At the same time more than 12,000 foreign youth study medicine in Cuba for free. As well as resisting US imperialism for 46 years, Cuban socialism has presented a viable alternative model for the oppressed of the world. The respect and solidarity which Cuba has won was reflected whenever Cuba or Castro were mentioned at the festival. The Venezuelan President has promised to send Venezuelan troops to defend Cuba if the US attacks.
Chavez speaks to the youth of the world
RCG delegates had the privilege of hearing Chavez speak on three occasions during the Festival. First of these was at the inauguration event where Chavez marked the 60th anniversary of the ‘greatest terrorist attack recorded in history, a true genocide committed by north American imperialism’ – the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Echoing Castro, he warned the US that if they were crazy enough to think about invading Venezuela, as they had Iraq and Afghanistan, ‘we will make them bite the dust defending our country…we will start the war of 100 years and set fire to the continent. The people will break out everywhere ready to show imperialism that this century will be our century, that we are not prepared to live on our knees, that we demand to be free!’ He concluded that ‘the only way to remove capitalism is restoring, strengthening, opening and constructing the path to socialism of the 21st century, a true socialism… Down with capitalism! Down with imperialism! Long live socialism! Long live freedom!’
At the conference on socialism for the 21st century, Chavez called for a great debate, open and democratic, on socialist construction. He described how capitalism and imperialism are destroying the planet and the human race. A sombre silence descended over his audience as Chavez predicted that world might end in 50 years if we fail to overthrow the destructive capitalist system. Conveying a sense of urgency, he adopted a slogan from Frederick Engels and Rosa Luxemburg: ‘Socialism or Barbarism!’
Chavez was the final witness at the two-day Anti-Imperialist Court which heard testimony from around the world, including:
• Vietnam, about the devastation caused by US use of agent orange. We saw images of children still being born with horrendous deformities;
• Palestine, about both life under occupation and life for the seven million Palestinian refugees;
• Mexico, about migrants who die or are murdered attempting to enter the US and about slave labour and incarceration once there;
• Brazil, about the struggle of the landless;
• The US, about youngsters sent to die as cannon fodder in an illegal and unjust war in Iraq;
• Cuba, about the actions of terrorist organisations in Miami, and the US government complicity, a testimony given by a Cuban government agent who worked under cover for 22 years.
Chavez opened his testimony with the accusation that ‘Mister Danger’, as he calls US President Bush, and his government, would attempt to assassinate him. He detailed the new fraternal trade deals made as part of Mercosur (South American market), Petrosur (South American petrol agreements) and Telesur (South American television channel), all of which undermine the domination of US capital and its ability to exploit the people of southern America. He threatened to end Venezuela’s oil exports to the US, stating that retail prices would double as a result. But he declared to the 700 US delegates at the Festival that any progressive group or social organisation could purchase refined oil direct from the Venezuelan government at half the market price.
Retelling an anecdote about how Che Guevara accidentally volunteered to be President of the National Bank, Chavez asked whether there were any young communists in the audience, to which 90% jumped up cheering ‘joven communista, marxista-leninista’ (young communist, Marxist-Leninist). He concluded his speech and closed the Festival by again borrowing the words of Castro, ‘condemn us, it does not matter, history will absolve us!’
Death threat against Chavez
A week after the World Youth Festival the US’s leading TV evangelist Pat Robertson called for ‘some of the covert operatives’ in the US to assassinate the Venezuelan President because it was ‘a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.’ Robertson, a Christian fundamentalist and ardent supporter of President George Bush, called Venezuela ‘a launching pad for communist infiltration and Islamic extremism’. US Secretary of Defense responded to international outrage with a pathetic reassurance that: ‘Our department doesn’t do that kind of thing. It’s against the law.’ This senile old fascist should be imprisoned for promoting terrorism, along with Bush, Blair and the rest of the imperialist warmongering thieves.
FRFI 187 October / November 2005
