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Venezuela: For a libertarian and emancipated society, fascism will not come to pass!

category venezuela / colombia | anarchist movement | press release author Saturday September 29, 2012 16:51author by Federación Anarquista Revolucionaria de Venezuela - FARV Report this post to the editors

1st communique of the FARV before the presidential elections of October 7, 2012.

The Revolutionary Anarchist Federation of Venezuela, formed by libertarian communist groups and individuals in the cities of Caracas, Valencia, Maracay and Barquisimeto, presents the following statement.

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For a libertarian and emancipated society, fascism will not come to pass!

1st communique of the FARV before the presidential elections of October 7, 2012.

The Revolutionary Anarchist Federation of Venezuela, formed by libertarian communist groups and individuals in the cities of Caracas, Valencia, Maracay and Barquisimeto, presents the following statement:

Black storms shake the air. Capitalism and the international economic powers seek to recapture the spaces that they are losing in Our America, they seek to chain us again, they seek to make the local history of the north-west an overall design for the peoples of the world. We are aware that the situation of October 7 is not a mere inter-bourgeois conflict, but a scene of class struggle and anti-colonial confrontation.

As anarchists, we recognise the possiblities that have been generated from the strained State/Organised Communities link, translated into undeniable achievements in relation to the social and popular rights that the current Bolivarian process has resulted in among the Venezuelan people. It would be foolish and unrealistic to say that no progress has been made in meeting the social and political needs of the historically excluded population in this country due to the struggles of the Venezuelan people. However, we also recognise the limitations of this link that, beyond the many errors and failures – owing to the hierarchical, bourgeois and reactionary nature of any state – tends to dam up the potential of the Venezuelan people in the construction of a society where capitalist hegemony is eradicated and economic, social and political organisation predominates through a true socialist, collective and assembly-based popular power of direct democracy. As anarchists we know that this deepening process is constituted as a collective and common task for the Venezuelan people and, therefore, should not be abandoned to the conditions that the tactical link with the Bolivarian state today raises.

No state is revolutionary: revolutions are made by the people. Therefore, before the upcoming presidential elections on October 7, we maintain a strong position not to let the traitorous and fascist bourgeois puntofijista right retake the reins of the national government, and emphasise our commitment to fight for the deepening of the Revolution . (Puntofijista refers to a power sharing agreement of the bourgeois parties, L.G.)

We know that historically anarchists of all kinds have been against bourgeois elections and all the trappings of the electoral show. As anarchists we do not validate this circus. States do not make revolutions, but they can destroy them. Therefore it is not surprising that, in certain specific and concrete junctures there have been examples in the world of electoral political participation by anarchist sectors, for instance the Spanish elections of 1936 where the Spanish proletarian people, many of them anarchists of both the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), gave their support to the Popular Front against groups and parties of the Iberian right-wing that quickly carried out the coup in July of that same year.

The same people that went to the polls were those who, months later, made possible one of the most glorious moments of the world proletariat, bringing into reality Libertarian Communism and Anarchy. Similarly, the Party for the People's Victory in Uruguay was founded on libertarian influences from the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation, whose members, among others, were great fighters that fought the southern dictatorships of decades past.

The junctures and peculiarities of each struggle are not a new issue. At a meeting celebrated in Biel (Switzerland), on the fiftieth anniversary of the Saint-Imier Congress, Bertroni and Malatesta raised the question of what the actions of the anarchists should be in the face of possible social revolutions that were not libertarian.

“It was not about describing a revolution like that which we want, an anarchist revolution would be possible if all, or at least the great majority of inhabitants of a determined territory were anarchists. It was seeking the best that could be done in favour of the anarchist cause in a social revolution that may occur in the present reality.” (1)
But, this exercise of imagination in favour of anarchism, of placing oneself before the outbreak of a possible revolution, found opponents in the libertarian camp:
“The comrades shine much light upon the question and the friend and comrade Colomer is not scandalised nor indignant. If these are new issues for him, anarchists are not frightened of new ideas.” (2)
A hypothetical situation to Malatesta is now a reality confronting revolutionary Venezuelan anarchists.

All this allows us to express that historical circumstances can not be ruled out when evaluating our participation in constructing revolutionary socialist spaces. Action and theory can not be divorced from reality, from the unfolding historical political context where we act. We are firm in the conviction that the possibility of a genuine radical revolutionary change has deep roots, is alive in the creative powers of the people in the communities who struggle to set the country on the path of social transformation and who support comrade Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias. We are convinced, as experience shows us, that in the grassroots lies the germ of a new communal society.

At the present moment there are already many examples of activities which, while not defined as anarchist, undoubtedly exhibit in their daily lives libertarian practices: communities that have a certain degree of social production, of self-management and self-organised security (January 23 Collectives, Alexis Vive Collective, Montaraz Collective, and others); community radio that do not conform to opinions contrary to the popular cause and which self-identify as libertarian (community radios of the north of Barquisimento, Waraira Repano, Toromaima Rebelde, Sanareña Community Radio, sites like La Guarura and the like). The Movement of the “Homeless”, the “Communities in Charge”, the “Our America Project”, the Ezequiel Zamora Peasant Front and very many other groups and organisations of the Popular Movement that, while playing a leading role as builders and promoters of the Bolivarian process, are also deeply critical of the same.

The vision of the neoliberal sectors of the Venezuelan right with their desire to implement economic policies that reduce the state to its minimum expression (as is currently the case in Europe, Africa and other countries of our America), does not allow them to feel sympathy to observe and listen to our position. Our struggle is for libertarian communism. We are not prepared to go back to a “state of things” where we will be persecuted occupants and social activists, where alternative media will be closed, where land and companies now communally owned will be returned to the big landowners and employers, where there will be systematic violation of human rights; where juridicial instruments that can help the popular cause, the future construction of truly horizontal and assembly-based community spaces, the realisation of worker, peasant and student councils will disappear; where the social missions that today are necessary to help the most dispossessed classes will be eradicated; to regress to a past, not so hidden that waits to make its fascist attack.

History has already given us many examples:

“From his guard post in La Protesta, Santillán understood better than any of the men of the Argentine left the direction and the sense of the anti-irigoyenista conspiracy, which was nothing really but an attempt to destroy the workers’ movement, to halt the social revolution (which was presumably approaching) and to establish the basis of a corporatist state (with the support of the armed forces, the landowners and the clergy). When the coup of the 6th of September – announced from the pages of a newspaper calling for a general strike – occurred, the FORA disregarded it: relying on an apparently very orthodox and logical view, its militants refused to intervene in the struggles of the bourgeois political parties, as if it had been about a mere dispute between conservatives and radicals or between anti-personalists and personalists (personalism refers to a Catholic philosophy, L.G.). Relying on inflexible dogmatism, they proclaimed: for an anarchist and a proletarian the same as the populism of Irigoyen goes for the fascism of Uriburu. This failure of perspective cost the FORA many lives and many exiled. It can even be said that it cost the organisation its own life. La Protesta was closed down and put the workers organisation outside of the law…” (3)
We are as much against these positions of the supposed “left” that would have us believe that “they are all the same” as those of the careerists and opportunists that assure us “this is a true revolution”.

So much more for certain “personalities” who, taking refuge in the ideals of anarchism (and certain postures of Trotskyism), seek to conceal their bourgeois world view and along with it, conceal the struggles and processes for change that have been developed during the last three decades from the popular communities and counter-hegemonic movements.

To these anarchists turned peddlers, merchants and tourists of the idea, we too say that fascism will not succeed.

The FARV reaffirms it will not support any government or any state, only the people in their emancipatory struggle and the Social Revolution.

Our position is the following: defend the popular gains we have achieved and have cost so much blood; combat by all means possible the return to power of the fascist oligarchic right of Venezuela and fight together with the people, the organisations, movements and social and political collectives allied to our struggle for the autonomous and popular deepening of the Bolivarian Revolution, against the “red right” and against the failures and errors provoked by the still present bourgeois capitalist judicial economic structure, which has yet to be dismantled. If it is not, we could run the imminent risk of being another failed example of a participative, democratic and socialist revolution in the world.

The overcast sky announces storm. We call all Venezuelan workers, peasants, all the exploited and excluded of Venezuela to attend the battle of October 7, to close the door to fascism, be it at the electoral polls or on the street.

Fascism will not come to pass. The invitation is to choose the option that expresses the vision of the revolutionary and socialist organisations, movements and collectives allied to our cause and in favour of the continuity of the Bolivarian Process. The invitation is to be alert to any agenda of violence on the part of the right, to defend our determination to be free. But, above all, to build – from the base made in the left, from everyday life and the day-to-day, from the small and common, from the street, the neighbourhood, the villages and the mountains – libertarian spaces that help the achievement of the Social Revolution.

“Down with the Mazziniano system that is the system of the republic in the form of a state, there is no other system if not that of the republic as a commune, the republic as a federation, a genuinely socialist and popular republic – the system of Anarchism” M. Bakunin. (4)

FOR A POPULAR AND BOLIVARIAN PROCESS!
FOR A LIBERTARIAN AND ZAMORANO SOCIALISM TOWARDS THE COMMUNAL REPUBLIC!
FOR LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM!

Federación Anarquista Revolucionaria de Venezuela - FARV


(1) Escritos. Errico Malatesta. Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation. Madrid 2002, Pg. 56.
(2) Ibidem. Pg. 59
(3) El Anarquismo en América Latina. Carlos M. Rama and Ángel J. Cappelletti. Ayacucho Library. Caracas 1990. Pg. LVII
(4) Stateless Socailism. Bakunin http://www.marxists.org/espanol/bakunin/socsinestado.htm

Related Link: http://farvespecifistas.blogspot.com.br/2012/09/por-una-sociedad-libertaria-y.html
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