Are you disappointed there was no single payer or public option? Sick of Blue Dogs?

[IndianaGreen]

Here is what progressive forces are planning to do: a united front against rapacious capitalism. It is called the Fifth International:

El Salvador's FMLN welcomes Hugo Chavez's call for a Fifth International

December 23rd 2009, by FMLN - Links
Resolution of the XXV Ordinary FMLN National Convention on the initiative to establish the 'Fifth (V) Socialist International'

This FMLN National Convention,

CONSIDERING:

(I)t is evident that neoliberalism, that extreme form of uncontrolled capitalism, has not and will not be able to resolve the great challenges faced by modern civilisation, currently immersed in a deep economic and financial crisis that has deepened the conditions of poverty and misery for millions of human beings. To this is added, among other calamities that afflict humanity, the evident and destructive effects of climate change, the growth of diseases and illness, the energy crisis, the food crisis, the rise in transnational delinquency, and the threats to peace and democracy in various regions of the planet.

4. That in this context it is of paramount importance that all of the social movements and political organisations that characterise themselves as progressive, left and socialist, wherever they are around the world, intensify our theoretical discussion and the formulation of alternative development projects -– in order that we meet the aspirations of prosperity, freedom and self-determination of the people, and that this in turn stimulates solidarity and fraternal cooperation between us all.

5. That it is the right of any national political force, whatever its ideology, to promote links of friendship and the exchange of experiences with likeminded political organisations around the world, without undermining their independence and identity, and respecting the realities of their socio-political process.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5029

[NoPasaran]

1. It will be interesting to see who is actually out there to answer the call for the V International

The First International died in the 1870s as a result of disagreements between Marx and Bakunin.

The Second (Socialist) International still exists, although any pretenses it had to being a revolutionary organization disappeared when most of its national sections decided to support the First World War.

The Third (Communist) International was founded in 1919 and only revolutionary elements who had opposed the war and were sympathetic to the soviet experiment invited to participate. The Comintern devolved into an instrument of Stalin's foreign policy and was dissolved in 1943 during the Soviet wartime alliance with Roosevelt and Churchill.

The Fourth (Trotskyist) International was founded in 1938 by the followers of Leon Trotsky in response to the global economic depression, the rise of fascism, and the betrayal of the Russian Revolution by the Stalinist bureaucracy. The Fourth International also still exists---sort of. Quite a number of groups claim the Trotskyist heritage, expending much of their energy in fighting amongst themselves. Following the abandonment of Trotskyism by the Joseph Hansen-Mary Alice Waters majority of the US Socialist Workers Party in the 1980s and the recent dissolution of the French Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire I have to question whether Trotskyism is still a credible political current or reduced to the status of an historical footnote like the diehard members of the Prohibition Party.

Who will answer the call for the Fifth International? I am genuinely curious.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Capitalism threatens the survival of humanity as well as the survival of all life

Moreover, the united front approach is an attempt to win the majority of the working class to a revolutionary perspective by organizing workers, first and foremost, to put up a fight in defense of their interests. It begins with those issues that workers themselves want to win and are prepared to fight for, no matter how modest these issues might be from a revolutionary perspective. In this respect, the united front approach is distinguished from the approach of social democrats, who are fundamentally reformists and do not want to put up a fight. The social democrats look to the capitalists to give workers some gains and are prepared to accept anything that comes their way, or nothing. The united front approach is also distinguished from the approach of the ultra leftists or sectarians who are only prepared to support a struggle if it exhibits a sufficiently revolutionary content. For example, the united front approach is prepared to take up a struggle for higher wages, if that is what workers want and if that is all they are prepared to fight for. The ultra leftists or sectarians insist on injecting more revolutionary demands into the struggle, even at the expense of alienating all, or almost all, the workers in the process.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5007

Here is Chavez's call for the V International:

Hugo Chavez's Call for a Fifth Socialist International

December 15th 2009, by Bill Leumer & Ann Robertson - Workers Action

First, the statement calls for the replacement of capitalism by socialism, pointing out that capitalism threatens the survival of humanity as well as the survival of all life, because capitalism combines “the economic crisis, with an ecological crisis, a food crisis and an energy crisis.”

Second, some parties that have signed the statement, for example, from Venezuela and Bolivia, are large, mass political organizations, which means that powerful resources may be available for the creation of a world socialist movement.

Third, it calls for an “ideological debate on the fundamental aspects of the process of construction of socialism.”

Fourth, it recognizes that the Third International degenerated under Stalinism, which betrayed struggles for socialism around the world.

Finally, and most importantly, as already mentioned, the statement of the conference notes that it “received” the call by Hugo Chavez for the creation of a Fifth International and voted to “create a WORKING GROUP comprised of those socialist parties, currents and social movements who endorse the initiative, to prepare an agenda which defines the objectives, contents and mechanisms of this global revolutionary body.” The conference also called for a “constitutive event” in Caracas in April 2010 that would aim at organizing this new international.

This call for the creation of a Fifth International can serve as a lightning rod for uniting socialist parties and social movements around the world in order to magnify by many times the power of the movement for socialism. The new totality, achieved on an international basis, will be far greater than the sum of its constituent parts. Moreover, in countries where socialist parties currently do not exist or are small and lack any substantial power, the Fifth International has the potential to serve as a pole of attraction, thereby overcoming the isolation and accompanying sense of hopelessness and demoralization of those fighting for a better world. It can therefore serve as an indispensable tool in helping working people around the world organize themselves in order to fight against the routine daily assaults of capitalism that are throwing increasing numbers of humanity into abject poverty and completely destroying the environment while at the same time making a tiny minority obscenely rich.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5007