[Marxism] World youth festival to be held in Venezuela

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following article from the Militant contains important
information, which I had not seen before, about the decision of the
World Federation of Democratic Youth to hold the next World Youth
Festival in Caracas in August 2005.  The Young Socialists, youth group
of the Socialist Workers Party, is a member of the WFDY.  This looks
to be a great youth festival and all organizations should try to get
lots of people to Caracas in August 2005

Unfortunately for me, because the meeting of  the WFDY took up Iraq,
the article also reiterates the Militant's position of opposition to
the resistance taking place in Iraq to the US occupation and their
refusal to take a clear anti-imperialist stand in the current US war
against the Iraqi resistance forces (resistance is placed in quotes in
the Militant--apparently they are not REALLY resisting occupation at
all).  The article does, however, state opposition to the "war on
terrorism" -- a theme that quietly reappeared in the previous issue of
the Militant after a lengthy winter vacation.

The article reflects the Militant's view that what is taking place in
Iraq is exclusively a conflict between the dynamic rising hegemony of
Washington and the comparatively decrepit and conservative
imperialisms of "old Europe" (a Rumsfeldism which the Militant has
taken to its bosom in recent issues). The people of Iraq are presented
as completely passive and basically accepting of the occupation. In
this framework, the resistance is presented basically as an element in
the declining, non-dynamic imperialist camp of "old Europe."

The author also seems to me to suggest that a division of Iraq imposed
by the US occupiers would be an advance for the Kurdish people, which
is not true.

The stance on the Iraq war today represents rejection of the stance
taken by revolutionary socialists in the runup to and during World War
II.  They clearly took the side of the oppressed nations when the
feudal Emperor Haile Selassie defended Ethiopia against invasion by
Mussolini's Italy, and when Chiang Kai-shek's pro-imperialist
government attempted to resist the Japanese invasion of China. They
left no room for doubt that they stood on the side of the oppressed
nation against the invaders even when troops from both warring
imperialist camps were involved in China during World War II.

Although inter-imperialist competition has contributed substantially
to shaping the US aggression in Iraq, the camp of "old Europe" has not
lifted a military finger to oppose the US invasion, is not known to
have given any support to the resistance in Iraq,  and has voted for
the occupation in international bodies. Not a particularly feroocious
"interimperialist conflict"!

Oh, well.  It's going to be a great youth festival.
Fred Feldman


The Militant   January 26, 2004
World youth festival to be held in Venezuela
(feature article)

BY OLYMPIA NEWTON
AND ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
LARNACA, Cyprus??We have reached genuine consensus,? said Miguel
Madeira, president of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY),
addressing a meeting here of representatives of progressive youth
organizations from around the world. ?We are unanimous in accepting
the offer by more than a dozen youth organizations in Venezuela to
host the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas in
August 2005.?
About 50 representatives of 41 youth organizations?most of them
affiliates of WFDY?from 33 countries attended the January 7
consultative meeting on the world youth festival. It was preceded by a
two-day meeting of WFDY?s General Council, which also endorsed the
proposal to organize the next international gathering of progressive
youth in Venezuela.

The World Festival of Youth and Students draws together students,
young workers, farmers, and other youth involved in protests against
imperialist war, movements for national self-determination, and other
social and political struggles. The last two festivals were held in
Cuba in 1997 and in Algeria in 2001. They were marked by the political
tone and character of groups and individuals engaged in popular
struggles for national liberation, union organizing and other battles
by workers resisting austerity drives by the bosses, fights by
peasants for land, mobilizations demanding women?s equality, and
progressive actions by students. The youth at these gatherings?about
12,000 in Cuba and nearly 7,000 in Algeria?came together to exchange
experiences and improve their understanding of how to advance their
struggles.

WFDY, the main initiator of these festivals that started half a
century ago, was dominated in the past by youth groups affiliated to
Communist Parties that looked to Moscow for political direction and
sustenance. The festival movement was interrupted for eight years as
the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union collapsed at
the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s. The international
gatherings started anew on the initiative of communists in Cuba.

Each of the two dozen delegates who spoke at the January 7 meeting
voiced their support for holding the next festival in the South
American country.

?10,000 Cuban volunteers in Venezuela?
?Venezuela has the potential to become a center of resistance to
imperialist intervention in Latin America,? said Otto Rivero, first
secretary of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) of Cuba. Holding the
festival there will be a strong answer by the progressive youth of the
world to U.S. imperialism?s designs to pacify working people in Latin
America by all means and prevent them from taking their destiny into
their own hands, he added. Rivero pointed to the role of Cuban
internationalists in Venezuela, especially the thousands of Cuban
doctors offering their services in free neighborhood clinics in areas
where workers and peasants have had little or no access to health
care, as part of a program sponsored by the Venezuelan government
called Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood). ?Our 10,000 volunteer
doctors and other internationalists now in that country will
enthusiastically greet holding the festival in Venezuela,? Rivero
said.

Over the last two years, Washington has intensified its efforts to
oust the government of Venezuela?s president Hugo Chávez. Since his
election in 1998, Chávez has drawn the wrath of the U.S. government
and its backers in the Venezuelan ruling class for taking measures
that cut into the prerogatives of big capital. These include an
agrarian reform law and a bill strengthening state control over the
country?s oil, gas, and other mineral resources that are part of the
country?s national patrimony. Washington?s hostility has also been
fueled by Venezuela?s closer economic and political ties with Cuba,
including collaboration on Venezuela?s nationwide literacy campaign
and the medical program.

With Washington?s support, the Venezuelan capitalist class has
unsuccessfully tried to topple Chávez?s government twice in the last
two years?through a short-lived military coup in April 2002 and an
employers? lockout a year ago. Each time, mass mobilizations by
working people caused divisions in the military and pushed back the
designs of the coup plotters. A third major confrontation is now
brewing as the pro-imperialist opposition in the country is pushing
for a referendum to recall the president.

?We thank you for your support and are happy of your decision to
accept our offer,? Wikénfred Oliver of the Youth of the Fifth Republic
(JVR) told participants in the January 7 meeting. He represented,
along with David Velásquez of the Communist Youth of Venezuela, the
youth organizations in that country that offered to host the 16th
world youth festival there. The JVR is affiliated with the Fifth
Republic Movement, Chávez?s party. ?The Venezuelan people have dealt
blows to the opposition of the wealthy who have carried out coup
attempts and more recently acts of sabotage,? Oliver said. ?Your
actions to organize and build a youth festival in my country will help
us in the struggle to confront imperialism.?

With support from Venezuela?s government, the prospective hosts said
they have the facilities and resources to accommodate up to 20,000
youth.

?The festival is an act of solidarity, and international solidarity
can have an impact on the struggle of the Venezuelan people against
U.S. intervention,? said Mafhoud Salama, representing UJSARIO, the
youth group of the Polisario Front, which is leading the national
liberation struggle in Western Sahara. ?We are at a critical point in
the political situation in the world where movements of national
liberation and all those trying to defend the interests of workers and
peasants face an imperialist military offensive of a new kind,? Salama
added.

?The anti-imperialist struggle of the Venezuelan people makes it
important to host the festival there, and the parallels with Africa
give us a good opportunity to build it in our own countries,? added
Katabazi Emmy of the East Africa Youth Council, which is based in
Uganda. ?Cuban internationalist volunteers have served in many
countries in Africa over the last decades, and are serving today in
Venezuela.?

Organizing the festival in Venezuela won?t only be an act that can
help push back U.S. designs for military intervention in Latin
America, said Olympia Newton of the Young Socialists in the U.S. ?It?s
tied to the need to oppose the U.S.-led ?war on terrorism?
worldwide?from Iraq to Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, Syria, and north
Korea.?

Shane McEvoy of the Young Communist League USA said that ?the
progressive movement in the U.S. knows of the pressures and attacks of
our government in Venezuela, and will want to work to build a festival
there.? He also stressed that ?stopping Bush is the most important
thing we can do for the Venezuelan people right now. It is the most
important thing we can do for peace.?

The first International Preparatory Meeting for the 16th World
Festival of Youth and Students will be held in early summer 2004,
Madeira informed participants. That gathering will issue the formal
call for the festival. ?But no one should wait until then,? Madeira
said. ?Work can start now to spread the word and get many local,
national, regional, and international youth organizations to begin
building it.? National preparatory committees will begin to be formed
in many countries by WFDY affiliates and other groups interested in
building the festival.

Discussion on Iraq war
During the WFDY General Council meeting, delegates discussed the
U.S.-led war and occupation of Iraq and decided on a series of actions
aimed at resisting imperialism?s drive to war and economic depression.

A wide range of opinions were expressed after the federation?s
leadership presented a draft political resolution. The document
stated, among other points: ?WFDY demands the immediate end of the
occupation of Iraq and respects the independent right of the Iraqi
people to decide their own future as an independent and sovereign
country. WFDY believes that the Iraqi people have full rights to fight
against the foreign occupation. The action and role of the UN was
completely passed over by the U.S. and its allies.?

A number of delegates praised the ?Iraqi resistance.? The most
outspoken were those from Syria, which had the largest delegation at
the meeting after Cyprus. Ahmed Dabbas of the Democratic Socialist
Youth Union of Syria urged WFDY to ?salute and support the Iraqi
resistance to occupation and stand for the unity of Iraq against
American plans to divide the country.? This echoed the Syrian
government?s position, which is adamantly opposed to any federal
structure, let alone self-determination, for the Kurdish people in the
region. The oppression of Kurds in Syria by the ruling class there
lurks behind this stance.

Aristos Damianou of the National Democratic Youth Organization (EDON)
of Cyprus proposed amending the resolution to call for an immediate
transfer of the administration of Iraq to the United Nations.

Newton of the Young Socialists in the United States presented a
different perspective. She argued that WFDY should not only oppose the
occupation of Iraq by the Anglo-American imperialists, or the UN for t
hat matter, but call for the unconditional withdrawal of all
imperialist troops and other occupying forces from Iraq, as well as
Afghanistan, the Balkans, Korea, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The intensifying rivalry between the major imperialist powers was also
a topic of discussion. ?With all the contradictions and
interimperialist conflicts, the European Union (EU) has had a clear
position in line with its imperialist interests and following U.S.
policies,? stated the draft political resolution.

Most delegates said they agreed with this statement. A number of
organizations represented at the meeting, however, have in practice
sided with the bourgeoisie in their countries against other
imperialist powers. EDON, for example, and AKEL, the Communist Party
of Cyprus, with which it is politically affiliated, recently changed
their position and now back entry of Cyprus into the EU. The theses
adopted by EDON at its January 2-4 congress, which were distributed to
delegates at the WFDY meetings, said that ?there are separate positive
elements in the EU, which should be made use of for the benefit of
working people.? AKEL won the plurality of votes, 35 percent, in
recent parliamentary elections in the Mediterranean island nation and
is now part of a coalition government with capitalist parties.

Annalucia Vermunt, representing the Young Socialists of New Zealand,
described how Wellington came to be part of the U.S.-led ?coalition of
the willing? that is occupying Iraq. ?Washington has used this
coalition, based in ?new Europe,? to deal further blows to its rivals
in ?old Europe,? especially those in France and Germany, who are not
following Washington?s lead quickly enough,? she said. ?There is no
united European Union. The only reason French and German imperialism
didn?t back the U.S.-led assault on Iraq was because its timing and
the degree of U.S. domination threatened their investments there and
long-term strategic interests in the region. The imperialist assaults
on Iraq and Afghanistan have everything to do with sharpening
interimperialist competition and we must oppose the entire imperialist
system and its wars.?

The WFDY General Council also approved two solidarity statements. One
backed the Democratic People?s Republic of Korea in its effort to
defend itself from attacks by Washington, Tokyo, and other imperialist
powers, and supported Pyongyang?s right to develop nuclear weapons for
self-defense. The second statement extended solidarity to coal miners
in Utah fighting to organize a union, and to striking grocery workers
in California.

The plan of action the federation adopted for 2004 includes a WFDY
solidarity trip to Palestine March 5-12 and protest demonstrations and
an ?anti-NATO summit? planned in Istanbul, Turkey, in June to coincide
with the next NATO summit there. At this gathering Washington plans to
accelerate the transformation of the armed forces making up the
U.S.-led NATO into a military alliance counter to the
?France-dominated? EU.



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