November 30th 2009, by Frederico Fuentes
Caracas -- Addressing delegates at the International Encounter of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez stated "the time has come for us to convoke the Fifth International." Faced with the capitalist crisis and the threat of war that is putting at risk the future of humanity, "the people are clamoring for" greater unity of left and revolutionary parties willing to fight for socialism, he said.
Like his call in 2005 to build "21st Century Socialism" and his call in 2006 for the creation in Venezuela of a new, mass revolutionary party - the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) - Chavez's call to unite the left in a new International is historic.
It builds on the experience of the four previous socialist "internationals", the first created by Karl Marx in 1864, which collapsed. The Second International was formed in 1889, but fell apart when representative parties sided with their own governments in the bloodshed of World War I.
The Third International was founded in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. However, as Chavez said, it "degenerated" under Stalinism and "betrayed" struggles for socialism around the world.
Leon Trotsky founded the Fourth International in 1938. However, Trotsky died in 1940 and his followers never succeeded in building mass support.
This call for a new international is also historic because of the political authority of Chavez himself: the leader of a revolutionary movement made up of millions struggling for a socialist society.
Following the approval by a majority of the delegates, of a special resolution in favor of founding of the "Fifth Socialist International as a space for socialist-oriented parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonize a common strategy for the struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism," Chavez reaffirmed his call, this time in his opening remarks as president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela to the party's 1st Extraordinary Congress, which began on November 21.
In front of 772 delegates elected from the grassroots in an unprecedented process involving close to a million party militants, he requested that the proposal be included in the agenda of the Congress.
"I call on this First Extraordinary Congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela to include in its agenda for debate, the proposal to convene political parties and currents to create the Fifth Socialist International as a new organization that fits the time and the challenge in which we live, and that can become an instrument of unification and coordination of the struggle of peoples to save this planet."
The Congress, which will last until April 2010, the month that the founding congress of the Fifth International has been set for, will now discuss the proposal. This discussion "must go out to the people, to the social organizations and other forms of popular power in the country," according the plan proposed by Chavez.
Likewise, this decision will be discussed by left parties around the world, who will have to take a position in the face of this transcendental proposal, which undoubtedly will be taken up will full vigor by a mass revolutionary party in construction.
Unity in the face of imperialist counter-offensive
The central discussion on the first day of the Encounter of Left Parties was the issue of the new imperialist offensive in the region, exemplified by the expansion of US military bases and the coup in Honduras.
continued>>>
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4965
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