Clarification

On Celia Hart and Chávez Referendum

In the article “ICL’s Trotskyism vs. Socialist Action Reformism” (Workers Vanguard No. 917, 4 July), we implied that Celia Hart opposed Hugo Chávez’s December 2007 referendum. We wrote:

“For her part, Celia Hart’s stance toward Chávez and his regime is contradictory. On the one hand, she has associated herself with the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ and has described Venezuela as ‘advancing slowly toward socialism.’ On the other hand, she criticized Chávez for ‘asking for permission to make the revolution,’ for example through last December’s referendum on constitutional reforms. ‘I’ve been a bit traumatized by all these referendums,’ she said at the SA [Socialist Action] conference. ‘Every time I hear the word “referendum” I want to draw my revolver’.”

In fact, Hart was a strong supporter of a “yes” vote and sought to give it a “Trotskyist” coloration. She wrote in her article “Leon Trotsky Says ‘Yes’ to Constitutional Reform—Last-Minute Trotsky Announcement Before the Dec. 2 Referendum in Venezuela”: “The purpose of this hurried note is to declare that the Trotskyists of the world, those who deserve to be taken into account, are FOR the ‘Yes’ vote” (Labor Standard online; translated from www.aporrea.org, 1 December 2007).

Hart expressed skepticism about making a revolution through a bourgeois electoral process and made criticisms of Chávez. But her bottom line was to take Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” as good coin—her point was that Chávez should have gone ahead with his “reforms” without any referendum.

Our article “Venezuela: Break with Bourgeois Populism! For Workers Revolution!” (WV No. 907, 1 February) noted that while promising some social reforms, the December referendum was centrally aimed at strengthening the repressive powers of the Venezuelan capitalist state. As Trotskyists, i.e., genuine Marxists who fight for socialist revolution to smash the bourgeois state, we were for a “no” vote on Chávez’s referendum.