LIAM MAC UAID reviews two recent books on the Venezuelan revolution: Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, by Richard Gott Verso £9.99) The Venezuelan Revolution - A Marxist Perspective, by Alan Woods (Well Red £7.99) "A ranting populist demagogue" was how Tony Blair's former minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, once described Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. But this "populist demagoguery" is providing free health care and literacy for the poor and rejecting neo-liberalism.
And for the growing number of socialists who are starting to follow events in Venezuela the unfolding revolution there is probably the most encouraging event in the last quarter century.
"Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution" is the perfect primer for an audience unfamiliar with the country and its history.
The book is a timely updating Wobblies! A graphic history of the Industrial Workers of the World edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman (Verso 2005) £14.99, reviewed by PIERS MOSTYN Looking for a new politics of class struggle based on grass roots organisation of workers and the community? There are few better starting points than the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) -and few more thorough and accessible ways of doing it than through this excellent new cartoon history.
If you ever questioned the capacity of the US working class for organisation and militancy, you need look no TuTTAer
A labour of love, it brings together strips by dozens of cartoonists creating a patchwork of stories, personalities and images that recreate the many facets of this important movement on tne nunareatn anniversary of its founding. of Richard Gott's In the Shadow of the Liberator, originally published in 2000. Gott served as the Latin American correspondent of the Guardian and displays an intimate knowledge of the continent's politics.
He also writes from a standpoint firmly supportive of Chávez and his regime, locating him in the tradition of Simón
WOBBLIES!
The IW W's roots are traced back to a combination of sources in particular the militant miners' struggles of the "Molly Maguires" and the Western Federation of Miners. From the outset the IWW had a vision of struggle and organisation on a broad front including the industrial, cultural and community.
Solidarity was the watchword and they drew in the self-organised communities of immigrants. Strike meetings would be addressed in Finnish, Spanish, Yiddish and English. All rebels were welcome.
They cherished the tradition of the footloose hobopicked up in later years by Woody Guthrie and handed down to the 1960s generation by Bob Dylan and Bolívar and other left-leaning Latin American military leaders such as General Omar Torríjos of Panama.
The ideal companion to Gott's book is Alan Woods' The Venezuelan Revolution - A Marxist Perspective. Woods' book does just what it says on
the cover, giving a Marxist para salvar 1000 empragos account of
Chávez's regime and explaining how it needs to continue the revolution and break from capitalism if it is not to suffer the fate of other Latin American revolutions.
Gott's political standpoint seems to be that of an enthusiastic supporter of revolutions in the developing world with a tinge of old school Stalinist guerrillaism.
He repeats without comment others.
It was also politically pluralistic with anarchists, Marxists and feminists all rubbing shoulders. No surprise, therefore, that the founding leaders included the 75 year-old Mother Jones and black anarchist union organiser Lucy Parsons alongside miners' leader Big Bill Haywood, nor that it produced some great cartoonists, poets and song writers like Joe Hill.
Alongside the detailed pen-portraits of these figures are those of many other long-forgotten heroes
Above all the book traces the workers' fights led by the IWW - coming across like a rolling version of the 1984-5 miner's strike that proceeds for two decades of militancy and solidarity. Read about the tremendous strikes in Lawrence and Patterson in 1912 and 1913, leading to great victory and terrible defeat, and you will wCC.
Every fight led to a new battle, particularly due to the intense repression they faced - from civil liberties and prisoners' defence, to Chávez's description of Mao Tse-tung as a "great strategist, statesman and revolutionary", and is reluctant to critically analyse the development of the revolution, its over-reliance on the old state apparatus and its lack of strategic clarity.
Woods' book is much superior in this regard. He explains that only by being honest about the revolution's strengths and weaknesses can we properly defend it.
He is an active Trotskyist and a founding member of the "Hands off Venezuela" campaign. The sense of political engagement he brings to the subject compensates for his uninspiring prose.
Solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution is going to be a major issue for socialists in 2006.
These two books are important contributions to the creation of this solidarity in Britain and will help to make up for the pretty scant literature available in English on Venezuela and its revolutionary process. opposition to war, joining the Mexican revolution and solidarising with Russia in 1917. Free speech fights led to armed self-defence in 1919 when the IWW halls were threatened with attack. Their vision of unionism was thoroughly political - defined in its broadest sense.
There are important lessons to learn trom the methods and tactics employed - particularly in linking up with the most disenfranchised sections of the class.
The great contemporary relevance of the book is further underlined in a recent article by co-editor Buhle on the legacy of the IWW for the global justice movement and today's workers struggles (www.monthlyreview.org/0605buhle.htm).
He has also collaborated with labour muralist Mike Alewitz (a contributor to the book) in launching a centennial Wobbly tour with banners, films and music in the USA (www.wobblyshow.org).
This is a handbook for organising against the most insuperable odds. Just what we need.
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