Red Youth solidarity with Venezuela

Over the May bank holiday weekend Red Youth participated in a weekend of discussion and debate on V I Lenin’s text The State and Revolution with specific reference to Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution. We were very pleased to be joined by two comrades from Venezuela; Marcos Garcia and Helena Menendez. In total, four sessions over two days debated Lenin’s teachings on the State and the challenges facing the Venezuelan masses.

Continue reading “Red Youth solidarity with Venezuela”

Maduro “ready to radicalise the revolution”

While the corrupt and reactionary agents of the bourgeoisie in Brazil have suspended democratically elected Dilma Rousseff’s presidential powers (Attempted Coup in Brazil – Proletarian), leaving the traitorous Temer holding the reins, the class struggle in Venezula intensifies.

Venezuela has suffered at the hands of the national and international bourgeoise and compradors who have conspired to sabotage the gains made by Chavez, Maduro, and the PSUV. Hoarding basic goods such as toilet roll and food, economic and infrastructural sabotage, capital flight, and more recently assassinations, combined with the drop in oil revenues, are just some of the tactics employed to undermine the popular democractic efforts to socialize Venezuela.

Continue reading “Maduro “ready to radicalise the revolution””

Remembering Chavez!

The following article is based on a speech delivered by a member of the Central Committee of the CPGB-ML to the memorial meeting, ‘Hugo Chávez and the Venezuelan Revolution’, organised by the party in London on 8 March 2013, we republish it now to mark the anniversary of the day of Comrade Chávez’s funeral. 

Speaking of Mao’s contributions, the Chinese Communist Party has summed up: “Without him the Chinese people would, at the very least, have spent much more time groping in the dark.”

The same, also at the very least, can be said about the relationship between Hugo Chávez and the people of Venezuela.

Continue reading “Remembering Chavez!”

Birmingham memorial meeting sends message to Venezuelan embassy

Chavez lives!

Tonight, in Birmingham, at the offices of the Birmingham branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist – Leninist) our comrades organised a memorial meeting for our dear departed comrade Hugo Chavez. The meeting was supported by the Indian Workers Association (Great Britain), the Birmingham section of the Communist Corresponding Society and the community organisation from our area United We Stand, representing the people of Balsall Heath, Sparkbrook and Highgate. A number of local people, including a section of unemployed comrades working in the unemployed section of United We Stand gave messages expressing their love for Hugo Chavez and their solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution.

As we are unable to attend London in time to sign the book of condolence we passed the following resolution unanimously,

Red Salute to Hugo Chavez from the revolutionary Birmingham proletariat!

A great revolutionary light has been extinguished, but the cause for which President Hugo Chávez fought lives on as his abiding legacy, for it is the finest cause in all the world – and he served it truly.

It is with profound sorrow that we learned of Comrade Chávez’s deteriorating medical condition and death, but his great spirit – which helped to transform the economic and political relations of his fellow workers, the Venezuelan masses, and the Americas – lives on.

Hugo Chávez will live forever in the hearts of the working masses of Venezuela, the Caribbean, Latin America, and all who struggle for the liberation of humanity.

Those assembled tonight at this memorial meeting in Birmingham, UK, pledge to do all we can in the coming months to ensure that imperialist interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs is scuppered, and that comrade Hugo Chavez’s immense contribution to building a socialist Latin America, and his work towards the defeat of imperialism is never forgotten!”

A red salute to Comrade Hugo Chavez!

____________________________

Memorial meeting for Hugo Chavez

Friday 8 March at 7pm
The Lucas Arms
254a Grays Inn Road, London, WC1X 8QZ

ALL WELCOME
____________________________

____________________________

Memorial meeting for Hugo Chavez

Friday 8 March at 7pm
Che House
274 Moseley Road, Birmingham, B12 0BS

ALL WELCOME
____________________________

Hugo Chavez

A great revolutionary light has been extinguished, but the cause for which President Hugo Chávez fought lives on as his abiding legacy, for it is the finest cause in all the world – and he served it truly.

It is with profound sorrow that we learned of Comrade Chávez’s deteriorating medical condition and death, but his great spirit – which helped to transform the economic and political relations of his fellow workers, the Venezuelan masses, and the Americas – lives on.

Hugo Chávez will live forever in the hearts of the working masses of Venezuela, the Caribbean, Latin America, and all who struggle for the liberation of humanity.

All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said that “Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.” And Comrade Mao Zedong added that “To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.” (‘Serve the people’, speech given at a memorial for Comrade Chang Szu-teh, 8 September 1944)

Though he gained power via election, defeating a former beauty queen, Chávez struggled relentlessly to implement social reforms, by constitutional means, to improve the lot of the working people.

He did so in the teeth of the fierce opposition of the wealthy Venezuelan bourgeois elite, who had originally penned the constitution to serve their own interests.

There can be no doubt that Chávez numbered among the great revolutionary spirits of his time. His name is rightly associated with those of Fidel and Raul Castro, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega and other Latin-American revolutionaries. Many of his followers considered he followed in the footsteps of their great revolutionary hero Che Guevara.

He strove to liberate the masses from poverty and US imperial domination; to serve the people and to arm them politically and organisationally.

For this reason, he was loved by the Venezuelan working masses, and for the same reason he was hated by the wealthy comprador capitalist elite and their media, who ceaselessly connived and collaborated with the US imperial goliath against his presidency and his government.

If it was the ballot box that brought Chávez to power, it was also the bullet – the threat of the revolutionary violence of the oppressed, whose representative he undoubtedly was – that maintained him.

It was the great love and popular support of the Venezuelan masses, for Commandante Chávez, and the loyalty of the rank and file of the Venezuelan military that frustrated the CIA’s illegal coup attempt in 2002. The US has never apologised for its dirty propaganda, political interference, and violent military campaign against the democratically elected president of Venezuela, and against the Venezuelan people and state.

For the US imperialists, although bogged down in their colonial campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, never ceased to regard all Latin America as their ‘back yard’, their ‘lebensraum’, their ‘natural’ colony to exploit, and they ceaselessly conspired with the local elite to depose Chávez.

The imperialists and reactionaries never forgave Chávez for his nationalisation of the great oil and mineral resources of Venezuela; for his social and medical programmes to improve the health and lives of Venezuelan people based upon this national wealth; for his successful and creative advocacy of socialist principles. Nor did they cease to rage at his practical, economic and political cooperation with communist Cuba, and with the popular progressive and anti-imperialist governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, El-Salvador, Zimbabwe, north Korea and elsewhere. When he successfully campaigned to change the constitution to tip the balance of power to benefit the poor, their anger rose to fever pitch.

Of course, the US cannot apologise for its unceasing attempts to bring Chávez’s government down, for its intentions remain unchanged: to re-conquer, to subdue and to repossess Venezuela’s huge wealth, to pour her resources into US imperialism’s failing economy, sustained as it is only by bloodshed and plunder.

As we mourn our fallen hero, therefore, we pledge also to redouble our efforts to defend the values and that Comrade Hugo Chávez upheld.

Imperialists all over the world will no doubt be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of rolling back the popular gains in Venezuela. We must remain vigilant, in opposing the attempts to recolonise Venezuela and Latin America.

We send our heartfelt condolences to Hugo Chávez’s family, comrades and supporters, and a final red salute to our fallen comrade!

Patria O Muerte!
Long live Socialism!

Red Youth Chavez

Red Youth Chavez's