[A-List] Venezuela: Draft program and principles of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)

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[Below, Links (http://www.dsp.org.au/links/) provides translations of
the draft program and principles of the provisionally named United
Socialist Party of Venezuela, which are currently being discussed at
its founding congress. The documents were drafted by the provisional
leadership of the PSUV.

[Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez made his first public call for the
creation a political instrument to unify the country's revolutionary
forces in December 15, 2006. Convened on January 12, 2008, some 1676
congress delegates elected from almost 15,000 socialist battalions --
local units of the PSUV -- will discuss and debate this draft program,
as well as the proposed priniciples and statutes of the new party,
over the next two months. In between congress sessions, delegates will
return to their local regions and battalions to ensure the widest
possible discussion of these documents among the ranks of the new
party.

[The documents were translated by Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke.
Fuentes and Janicke are members of the Australian Democratic Socialist
Perspective living in Venezuela, where they have been reporting for
Green Left Weekly. Fuentes works at the Miranda International Centre,
in the "The Political Instrument for the 21st Century" program.
Janicke also writes for Venezuela Analysis.

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.......II. The program of the PSUV

1. Defence of the revolution. Build socialism

Taking as its starting point the championing and unconditional defence
of the government of the Bolivarian revolution, led by President Hugo
Chavez, and the will of the Venezuelan people to construct the
socialism of the 21st century, the program of the PSUV is the
instrument with which to set out the objectives, forms and methods of
this revolutionary project, and express them at each moment through
slogans that can facilitate the transition from the immediate reality
to the end goal; slogans that, by definition, adapt themselves
permanently to the immediate circumstances.........

3. Build Popular Power. Socialise power

The program of the PSUV has as its objective making reality the slogan
"in order to end poverty you have to give power to the poor", or
better said: the people. That is to say, build a government based on
Councils of Popular Power, where workers, campesinos, students and
popular masses are direct protagonists in the exercising of political
power.

The program of the PSUV proposes the socialising of political power,
establishing the direct exercising of decision-making power by the
masses in their organisations; their unrestricted right to scientific
research and the free artistic creation, and the democratisation of
access to all cultural policies.

The PSUV will carry out a constant struggle to:

* Promote democracy and a assembly-based culture within the Party, and
in all spheres where it is present (communities, work fronts, areas of
study, activity etc.)

* Struggle to make self-government a reality, with cities, communal
councils and communes as the basic political units.

* Promote, where necessary, the creation of new territories and/or
municipalities in areas of human settlements, that, for historic,
geo-political, cultural, productive or strategic reasons require the
overcoming of fragmentation, along with the creation of their
respective self-governments.

* Struggle for the transference of the largest amount possible of the
planning, execution and control over public policies to these city
governments, communes and community councils by the constituent powers
and its institutions.

* Promote direct and constant participation. That the largest amount
of men and women possible be involved in the resolution of all the
problems posed by the struggle in its different phases and levels:
from the socialist cities to the commune and the communal councils in
different areas (popular power, social missions, water committees,
sports committees, cultural committees, housing committees etc) up to
the military reserves. In regards to the specific area of industrial
workers, two fundamental axes for the implementation of this task
should be the concepts of popular control and self-management.....

Read the whole document at http://www.dsp.org.au/links/node/261

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Draft declaration of Principles of the United Socialist Party of
Venezuela (PSUV)

.......The Party (Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of
Venezuela is born as an expression of the revolutionary will of the
people and their political leadership. It is the product of the
revolutionary unity of the majorities and sees the supreme value of a
plural, multifaceted unity that encompasses the broadest diversity in
regards to ethnic, ideological and political origins, and around which
the destiny of the homeland will be forged. Given that it summarises
the most outstanding effort towards national and social emancipation
of our past, the most genuine Latin American internationalism, and
because it has been the motor of the socialist revolution underway in
Venezuela, Bolivarianism is at this moment in history the point of
unity of all the perspectives of revolutionary and socialist
thought......

...Inter-imperialist competition opens up cracks between the owners of
the world and by default creates a multi-polar world in constant
turmoil, to which the United States can only counterpose its military
supremacy. Simultaneously, due to the demands to maintain its rate of
profit, the out of control voracity of imperialism subjugates the
bourgeoisies of sub-developed countries beyond what is tolerable.
Those who for two centuries were submissive minor partners, who
benefited from the looting of their own peoples, see themselves pushed
into conflicts that fracture their former association of convenience.
While the disputes between imperialists paralyses the world
institutions that came into being at the end of the Second World War,
and fragments at every point on the globe the hegemonic bloc comprised
of imperialists and subordinated capital, the combined impact of this
phenomena, within a framework of constant and growing popular
rebellion, has worked towards demolishing the institutions through
which political power was sustained in countries with dependent and
sub-developed economies. The world is therefore witnessing
realignments of all types, always to the detriment of the power of the
United States.

This conjuncture opens up the perspective of calling for an
international anti-imperialist bloc on a grand scale, with the
participation of national, provincial and local governments, different
types of social movements and political forces from a broad
ideological viewpoint. The idea is to unite in action hundreds of
millions of people throughout the entire world against imperialism and
its wars.

Similarly, in Latin America there exists the possibility of producing
a qualitative transformation in the politico-organisational reality of
tens of millions of exploited and oppressed. The Party (Bolivarian
Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela therefore sees the
necessity of forging instruments in which they can converge, and at
the same time remake universal revolutionary thought, as the vanguard
in an era of immense challenges and great victories: capitalism is
international; the revolution is international; our thought and the
action must be international.

Action in function of the notion of a global anti-imperialist bloc and
the revolutionary and socialist convergence of the Latin
American-Caribbean peoples, will guide the steps taken by the Party
(Bolivarian Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela with the
certainty that making these objectives a reality will change the
relationship of forces at the international scale and inaugurate a new
historic era.

The agony of imperialism is an unavoidable fact. The Party (Bolivarian
Party for the Socialist Revolution) of Venezuela is born in order to
defend the homeland, to lead the revolution towards its emancipatory
objective, to join with all the other peoples of the world in the task
of burying imperialism and building a new world, fit for a free and
full humanity.......

read the whole document at http://www.dsp.org.au/links/node/261