A Reader's Notebook

The current issue of Labour/Le Travail No. 60 (Fall 2007) reports that this excellent publication, published twice-yearly, will soon have all its back issues online and searchable. It began publishing, as Labour/Le travailleur, in 1978. The current publisher, Athabasca University, will establish a one-year firewall, limiting online access of the two most recent issues to subscribers.

However, the Canadian Periodical Index, http://tinyurl.com/2kdbpm, currently publishes the full contents (minus book reviews) of the two most recent issues, as well as selected articles and book reviews from past issues going back a dozen years or so.

In addition, past issues since 2001 are available for free online on the History Coop, http://www.historycooperative.org/home.html.

The focus of many articles is often more “micro” than “macro” — reflecting the tendency of graduate students to focus their dissertations on discrete periods and particular experiences and organizations in the distant past, rather than tackling the “big picture” canvasses of the struggles and politics of the working class as a whole. But there are many other features of the publication that make Labour/Le Travail a valuable source for any serious socialist in Canada, and of interest to many elsewhere who are eager to learn from the history of the workers movement in a country with a relatively developed class structure and some major internal national questions.

One of the most useful features is the book review section, which usually covers a couple of dozen or so books on labour or the left, broadly defined, published in recent years.

The current issue features, among others, articles on the Victoria general strike of 1919 (inspired by the upsurge in Winnipeg, but much less known); two articles on childhood experiences in the Ukrainian-Canadian working class and left in depression-era Canada; and an article on “Transforming Worker Representation: The Magna Model in Canada and Mexico”, a timely piece that indicates many of the implications of the recent “Framework of Fairness Agrement” signed between Magna and the Canadian Auto Workers union.

Of particular interest to me is an outstanding “Research Note” by Larry Savage on “Organized Labour and Constitutional Reform Under Mulroney”. It is a fascinating account of how the Canadian and Quebec labour movement (actually two distinct labour movements, each with their own dynamic) developed policy in relation to the Quebec national question, the issue that dominated Canadian politics in the 1980s and 1990s. The article can be found on-line at http://tinyurl.com/2e8zzy or http://tinyurl.com/25bgha, and because it is rather lengthy I won’t reproduce it here.

The article provides many insights into the dynamics of the relationship between organized labour and the NDP, showing how the conflicting pressures each was under produced contrasting policies on a major issue. The labour movement, and in particular the Canadian Labour Congress, was torn between the increasingly pro-sovereignty positions of its Quebec affiliate, the FTQ, and the indifference or open hostility toward Quebec’s national demands in the labour movement in English Canada. The CLC eventually opted for a position that allowed the FTQ complete autonomy, in a relationship that is the labour movement’s equivalent of the “sovereignty/association” formula favoured by the sovereigntist Parti québécois. The NDP, in contrast, largely because it is much more enmeshed in the mechanisms of state power through its Parliamentary caucus and provincial governments, took the opposite course and hardened its opposition to Quebec self-determination.

A balance sheet of the Quebec Social Forum

In an article posted on Quebec’s L’aut’journal, a progressive on-line journal, Diane Lamoureux offers a critical assessment of the recent Quebec Social Forum (FSQ).

Lamoureux, a well-known feminist scholar with a long history in the Quebec left (including a stint in the Trotskyist movement in the 1970s), acknowledges the achievements of the Forum, which was held in late August: the broad participation (some 5,000 registrants), the mix of generations, the quality of many of the workshops and plenary sessions, and the “partial inclusion of the First Nations”. It was, she agrees, a “magical moment” that fully justified the huge effort made by many militants to get it together.

But she also criticizes the Forum on a number of points.

The first was its failure to reach out to the left in the rest of Canada. “At a time when the federal government... is not only (neo)liberal in its economic and social policies — we’re used to that by now! — but also militarist and socially and morally conservative, a certain joint action (concertation) between social struggles on both sides of the Ottawa River would seem to be called for,” she writes.

The demonstrations at the Montebello summit, on the eve of the FSQ, were an opportunity for such collaboration, she writes. But “apart from the presence of Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians at one of the evening roundtables, and a few other guests from Canadian NGOs, this necessary coordination of struggles could not really be manifested in the spirit of the FSQ, since the Forum was only Québécois.”

Another weakness, Lamoureux says, was the very limited involvement of the indigenous First Nations. “The Saturday night panels made some room for them, but the question of the relationship that the Québécois from the various migration processes since the 16^th century and the members of the First Nations want to and can maintain was not at the heart of the FSQ’s reflections.”

There was a good mix of several generations of activists at the Forum, Lamoureux notes, including many students. “But the cross-fertilization of ideas did not manage to produce a synthesis that could help relaunch the militant struggles, as is demonstrated by the extremely general nature of the Declaration adopted by the Assembly of Social Movements, which launched a call for mobilization on January 26, 2008, the date set internationally at the most recent World Social Forum.”

Lamoureux notes that the WSF was originally intended to help spark some synergy among the various left, anti-imperialist, feminist, ecologist and antiracist currents. In Quebec, she says, many of these social movements are already involved in all kinds of coalitions. But the FSQ did not generalize this “networking” function any further.

One problem, in Lamoureux’s view, is the “smorgasborg” method of organization, linked to the “self-programming” phenomenon. But despite the useful brainstorming, the hundreds of workshops and plenary sessions were unable to overcome a certain parcellization of experiences: “Each attended to its own activity, and interactions could not really occur; the ecologists discussed the environment, and the feminists often found themselves talking among themselves.”

As a result, the concluding Assembly of Social Movements could only come up with a final declaration of good intentions, each group winning a general support for its projects, but so ecumenical as to lead to no meaningful common actions.

What the Quebec left really needs, Lamoureux argues, is an estates-general of the social movements in which we can set aside the “silo” vision and ask ourselves seriously what we can do together to fight the rise of the right in all areas of social and political life.

“These movements have developed the habit of talking among themselves, but they have ‘unlearned’ how to talk to the people, not only to convince them but also to hear their anxieties and try to respond to them in some other way than undifferentiated populists .”

Lamoureux’s call for “more targeted and more systematic thinking” may, as she says, be impossible in a format as dispersed as a social forum. Although she doesn’t say so, it seems to me that she is making the case for a broad party of the left. All the more surprising, then, that Lamoureux does not address her critical thinking to some proposals for Québec solidaire, the new left party that she herself supports.

Diane Lamoureux’s article appeared originally in the Jesuit magazine Relations, No. 721, December 2007, http://www.revuerelations.qc.ca/.

Fidel Castro on Bali Conference

For info on Castro's reference to Jean Chrétien's "hurtful" remarks to him in 1998, see:
Castro rebuffs Canada's call for reform 6.51 p.m. ET (2252 GMT) April 28, 1998 http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/canadablows43098.html

and Castro's comment on his dialogue with Chrétien:
Fidel Castro talks about the Statement Made by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien During the III Summit of the Americas http://www.periodico26.cu/english/news_cuba/fidel121507.htm

The reference to Niemeyer at the end of Castro's message is to Oscar Niemeyer, the Brazilian architect and communist who celebrated his 100th birthday on December 15 (coincidentally my late mother's 100th as well!). -- RF

A Message from Fidel Castro to Cuba's Prime TV Programme The Round Table http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/76936

Havana, December 17, 2007.

Dear Randy:

I listened to the entire Round Table programme on Thursday the 13th, without missing one single second of it. The news about the Bali Conference, commented on by Rogelio Polanco, the Director of the newspaper "Juventud Rebelde", confirms the importance of the international agreements and the necessity of taking them very seriously.

On that small island of Indonesia, there was a meeting of many Heads of Government of countries of the so-called Third World; they are fighting for their development and they demand fair treatment, financial resources and transferrals of technology from the representatives of industrialized nations which are also being represented there.

The UN Secretary General, faced with the tenacious obstruction by the United States in the midst of the 190 representatives meeting there, and after twelve days of negotiations, stated on Friday the 14th, Cuban time, when it was already Saturday in Bali, that the human species could disappear as a result of climate change. And then he went off to East Timor.

That declaration transformed the conference into a shouting match. On the twelfth day of pointless persuasive efforts, the American representative Paula Dobriansky, after sighing deeply, said: "We join the consensus." It is obvious that the United States made moves to get around its isolated position, even though it didn't change the empire's dismal intentions one iota.

The grand show began: Canada and Japan attached themselves immediately to the American coat-tails, facing the rest of the countries that were demanding serious compromises on the emissions of gases that are causing the climatic change. Everything had been foreseen ahead of time between the NATO allies and the powerful empire which, in one fell swoop of deceit, agreed to negotiate during 2008 in Hawaii, U.S. territory, for a new convention project that would be presented and approved at the Copenhagen Conference in Denmark in 2009; this would take the place of the Kyoto Protocol which is due to expire in 2012.

The theatrical solution was reserved for Europe in the role of saviour of the world. Brown spoke, as did Merkel and other leaders of the European countries, requesting international gratitude. What an excellent present for Christmas and the New Year! None of the eulogists mentioned the tens of millions of poor people who go on dying of diseases and hunger each year given the complex realities of the present, just as if we were living in the best of all worlds.

The Group of 77, which includes 132 countries that are struggling to develop themselves had achieved consensus to demand from the industrialized countries a reduction of the gases that cause climatic change, for the year 2020, from 20 to 40% lower than the level attained in 1990, and from 60 to 70% in the year 2050, something which is technically possible. Furthermore, they were demanding the assigning of sufficient funds for the transferral of technology to the Third World.

We cannot forget that those gases give way to heat waves, desertification, the melting of the glaciers and the increase of the levels of the seas which could cover entire countries or a large part of them. The industrialized nations share with the United States the idea of converting foods into fuels for luxury cars and the other wasteful practices of the consumer societies.

All of this that I am stating was demonstrated when on that very Saturday, December 15th, at 10:06 Washington time, it was announced that the President of the United States had asked the Senate, which had then approved it, for 696 billion dollars for the military budget for the 2008 fiscal year; in this amount, 189 billion was ear-marked for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A feeling of sound pride came over me as I remembered the dignified and calm way in which I responded to the hurtful proposals directed to me in 1998 by the then Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. I harbour no illusions.

My most profound conviction is that the answers to the current problems of Cuban society which possesses an average educational level close to Grade 12, almost a million university graduates and the real possibility for its citizens to become educated with no discrimination whatsoever, require more varieties of answers for each concrete problem than those contained on a chess board. We cannot ignore one single detail, and we are not dealing with an easy path, if the intelligence of a human being in a revolutionary society truly needs to prevail over instinct.

My fundamental duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but it is to bring experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in.

Like Niemeyer, I believe that one has to be consistent right up to the end.

(Signed) Fidel Castro Ruz

(Handwritten)

Please include this letter in the Round Table programme that is announced today to be about Bali.

F. C.

5:16 p.m.

Quebec’s debate on ‘reasonable accommodation’ — a socialist view

In recent months Quebec has been immersed in a collective debate on its “national identity”. It erupted in 2006 when the mass media began making a fuss about a few incidents in which members of minority “cultural communities” — mainly Muslims, but also Jews, Sikhs and others — had requested and in some cases obtained measures to accommodate their particular religious beliefs.

Some Muslim students, pursuant to a complaint to Quebec’s human rights commission, had been allocated prayer space in an engineering school. A community health clinic had organized women-only prenatal classes for some Muslims. A school’s ruling that a Sikh student could not wear his kirpan, or ceremonial dagger, because it was a “weapon” was overturned by the Supreme Court, which recognized the kirpan as a religious artefact. Hassidic Jews had requested, and paid for, the frosting of the windows of a YMCA gym to shield teenage males at their neighbouring school from the sight of females working out.

These and similar incidents — all equally banal — were given greater weight when Mario Dumont, the leader of the right-wing Action démocratique party (ADQ), seized on them to campaign in opposition to “unreasonable accommodation” of such practices and in defence of “Quebec values and identity”. His message resonated in some circles. In one notorious incident, the council in Hérouxville, a small town north of Trois-Rivières, posted a “code of conduct” instructing prospective immigrants that they would not tolerate certain practices such as “the stoning of women”.

The opposition to “accommodation” of minorities was clearly motivated in part by the climate of fear of “others” generated by the “war on terror”, and the media attention was not unrelated to the Islamophobia that is part and parcel of the campaign in support of Canada’s military intervention in Afghanistan. But it soon became clear that this xenophobia — or “heterophobia” as some call it — also reflected some deeper concerns and insecurities about the status and future of the French language and culture within the native Francophone population, an 80% majority within Quebec but a 20% minority within Canada.

At first, the governing Liberals and (then) official opposition Parti québécois did little to resist Dumont’s demagogy. But the campaign raged on, and in February of this year, on the eve of the Quebec election campaign, Premier Jean Charest appointed a commission of inquiry to examine the issue of reasonable accommodation.

The Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (commonly referred to as the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, after its co-chairmen, Professors Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor) was instructed to “formulate recommendations to the government to ensure that accommodation practices conform to Québec’s values as a pluralistic, democratic, egalitarian society,” and to deliver its report by March 31, 2008. Bouchard and Taylor commissioned various research reports and this fall held public hearings throughout Quebec.

Bouchard and Taylor

In all, some 3,300 persons attended the hearings, and 764 of them made presentations to the commissioners. More than 960 written briefs were presented; many of them are posted on the commission’s web site.

The hearings were given wide media coverage. The commission heard many presentations that were racist and xenophobic, especially in rural areas far from Montréal, where most of Quebec’s minority “cultural communities” are located. But when the hearings moved to Montréal, near the end, there were many strong and often moving presentations made by minority representatives themselves explaining the importance to them of their religious beliefs and providing much-needed context to the recent events.

The public debate tended to raise many issues that went far beyond the concept of “reasonable accommodation”, a legal concept that has traditionally referred primarily to special measures taken to aid pregnant women (special leave, lighter duties) or the handicapped and other disadvantaged persons (ramps, special education classes, etc.) and facilitate their participation with equal rights, if not equal circumstances, in society. At issue now were important questions addressed to the fundamental values and concepts identified with Quebec citizenship, and more specifically how immigrants and other non-native Francophone communities could be welcomed and integrated within Quebec’s predominantly French-speaking society. And the debate highlighted, once again, some important differences pertaining to these issues not only within Quebec but between prevailing conceptions of Quebec nationhood in Quebec and conflicting conceptions of Canadian citizenship promoted by the federal government.

(The Commission specifically excluded from its consideration the “rights and prerogatives” already accorded to Quebec’s English-speaking community, and “the political and legal status of the aboriginal peoples”, eleven of which are recognized as distinct “nations” in Quebec law.)

I’ll have much more to say in subsequent posts about this vast “débat de société”, which sheds some much-needed light on key issues relating to the Quebec national question. But readers will benefit greatly from considering what some Québécois themselves have to say on these questions. And in particular, what the socialists have to contribute to the debate.

A valuable contribution is an article by Benoit Renaud, a leader of the International Socialists, a recognized “collective” or political current within Québec solidaire (QS), the new party of the left. Renaud was involved in drafting the QS brief to the Bouchard-Taylor commission, and his article was published in mid-November as part of that process. The QS brief, which was presented to the commission on December 11, is now available (in French only) on the party's web site. I will comment on it later.

Renaud’s article appears in the November issue of the journal Résistance!. Here it is, my translation. – RF

Issues facing the Bouchard-Taylor Commission

By Benoit Renaud

November 16, 2007

This commission was established by the Charest government just before the elections last March, in the wake of a campaign led by the ADQ and relayed by the media to the effect that “unreasonable” accommodations of religious and cultural minorities were becoming so numerous as to constitute a threat to “Québécois values and identity”.

The reaction of the government (and the PQ) was initially to refuse to address the issue; they said the ADQ was exaggerating and that these questions should be left to be settled by mutual agreement or through the courts. But the increasing number of “cases”, which for the most part had nothing to do with reasonable accommodation in the strict sense (a legal decision based on the Charters and designed to avoid situations of indirect discrimination), ended up drawing the PQ, and the government, onto the minefield laid by the sensationalist media and fueled by ADQ leader Mario Dumont’s statements.

The ADQ positioned itself as the party that defended Quebec identity and culture against the threat represented by immigration and minorities. The other two big parties ended up adopting variable doses of the same medicine, combined with some empty liberal phrases against the dangers of racism. But no one stated clearly that this was a campaign about looking for scapegoats to blame for the very real crisis of the Quebec national project, the primary responsibility for which lies with the major political parties and our elites.

Islamophobia, immigration and sovereignty

Six years of “war against terrorism”, coming on top of a long history of colonialism in the Middle East, have fueled every possible prejudice toward Muslims and the peoples associated with them in the western imagination (including Arabs of Christian or atheist persuasion, Sikhs, Orthodox Jews, etc.). When the municipal council members in Hérouxville adopted their “code of life”, it was because it had been hammered into them for some years — in the mass media and through the mouths of political leaders like Stephen Harper and Tony Blair — that the evil fundamentalist terrorists are “against our way of life” and that we are in a “war of civilizations”.

The presence of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan is based on this colonialist ideology, which holds that women and children in the Muslim countries need the protection of Christian white men against the irrational and violent men of their own society. It is necessary, therefore, to escape this logic of war as fast as possible and make Quebec a place of welcome for those men and women who are fleeing imperialism, whether they are Iraqi or Afghan refugees or U.S. soldiers who refuse to go and fight for the wealth and power of their leaders.

In all Western societies, immigration is used in the interests of economic growth without much thought being given to the genuine social, cultural and political integration of these new people. The effect is to reinforce tendencies to ghettoization on the one side and xenophobia on the other — irrespective of one’s theoretical model of citizenship, whether it is the French concept of jus soli or right of the soil, the U.S. concept of the “melting pot”, or Canadian multiculturalism.

There is no alternative but to break with the neoliberal logic in its entirety if we are to develop a vision of immigration that is based on both the rights and needs of immigrants and the collective aspirations of the host society.

The sovereigntist project, which for forty years was embodied in the Parti québécois, has been undermined from within by the PQ’s enthusiastic embrace of neoliberalism and its strategy of accommodation with imperialism as a means of facilitating recognition of a sovereign Quebec following a referendum victory. But the very idea of national independence becomes meaningless if such a victory does not allow Quebec society to defend itself against the effects of globalization and to withdraw from the criminal military alliances led by the United States.

What we tend to forget is that the “renewed federalism” defended by the Liberal party of Robert Bourassa and Claude Ryan until the Charlottetown Accord has likewise failed. What has carried the day, in practice, is the centralizing federalism defended by Trudeau and Chrétien. While the Quebec Liberal party (PLQ) of Jean Charest embodies acceptance of this defeat (hence its declining popularity among Francophones), the ADQ has attempted to resuscitate the project in alliance with the federal Conservatives. But the credibility of this autonomist option is extremely limited and suffers from its association with the right-wing, militarist Harper regime.

Tolerance or struggle against oppression?

The weakness of the liberal response to the xenophobic wave has been amply demonstrated by the hearings of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. You cannot respond to a people who are in profound disarray, overwrought and continually assailed by discourses based on fear by simply saying that we must be kind and that diversity and openness are better values than homogeneity and withdrawal into a collective autism.

The kinds of questions that are now being put to the B-T Commission are all caught between the two poles of liberal tolerance and conservative intolerance. No one is talking in terms of oppression, whether of Quebec or of its racialized minorities, or of a struggle (ideally, a common struggle) against these oppressions. Very few people evoke, even in passing, the context of the “war against terrorism” and its ideological consequences, or its effects on our society and the way in which it has managed immigration through 25 years of neoliberalism. No one dares to refer to the two referendum defeats, the two counter-offensives of the federal state that ensued (the Constitution Act, 1982 and the “Clarity” Act), or the strategic impasse in which the sovereigntist movement now finds itself. There is talk of “laïcité” or secularism in terms of individual behaviour or the exclusion of this or that type of clothing or accessory in certain public places. But no one denounces the fact that our government is massively subsidizing faith-based schools.

The logical political consequence of the present polarization would be the election of a majority ADQ government in the next general election (probably next spring) and the election of a majority of Conservative MPs from Quebec in the next federal election. In fact, the conservative, narrow defence of identity has become the alternative to the disoriented sovereigntist project, and the rise of intolerance weakens the determination of the Québécois to oppose the war in Afghanistan and Harper’s militarist regime. The disarray of the centre-right parties (PQ, Canadian and Quebec Liberals, Bloc Québécois) is benefiting almost exclusively the hard right (ADQ and federal Tories).

The response of Québec solidaire

Québec solidaire (QS) had the right idea in denouncing this demagogy based on fear of others. But until now we have maintained a certain ambiguity on the question of accommodations, strictly speaking, and on what is or is not reasonable. This ambiguity was necessary in part so as not to presume the result of our internal discussion process on the topic. But in doing so, we have in fact occupied a position that is simply a bit more liberal (in terms of political theory) than the one held by PQ leader Pauline Marois or Premier Charest, and this has served to keep the debate on the continuum of “reasonableness”.

The tabling of the QS brief to the B-T Commission will be a golden opportunity to stake out a distinct position for our party within the political landscape. But to do so, Québec solidaire’s intervention must be based on clear statements and bold proposals.

In the first place, it will be necessary to make the link between this debate and the context of the “war against terrorism” and to denounce the irrationality of Islamophobia. Secondly, we must try to clarify the discussion by distinguishing what is truly reasonable accommodation (a legal concept based on rejection of adverse discrimination) from private arrangements (which should not even be matters for discussion), and from policies for the management of cultural and religious diversity in the public sphere, including the workplace.

Reasonable accommodation, strictly speaking, is an application of the individual rights, including freedom of religion, enshrined in the Charters. Challenging this reality would mean abandoning any notion of rights in order to impose the wishes of the majority without regard for individual freedoms. An about-face of this nature would effectively amount to the abandonment of one of the foundations of what we propose as a democratic society.

As for public policies, it would be appropriate to establish some guidelines for the protection of the rights of each and every one, including freedom of religion and expression, without creating any hierarchy among these rights. We ought to define more precisely our model of “laïcité” or secularism on the basis of the orientations already adopted by Quebec in matters of education, language and management of cultural diversity.

For example, for the schools (which were the central issue in the most recent election campaign in Ontario), Quebec might establish a single secular public school system within which the various religions and cultures could coexist. There is nothing to prevent a public school from providing hallal or kosher (or vegetarian) menus, offering optional courses in Hebrew, Arabic or Greek, or allowing young people to wear clothing or accessories associated with their particular religion or culture. But within this public and secular school, everyone would learn together about the history of Quebec, the sciences, arts and the foundations of all the great religions and philosophies of humanity. Quebec could become a society in which the world’s diversity not only coexists (and is tolerated) but meets, within a perspective of creating something new, right here, and in French!

What resolution for this crisis?

A satisfactory and lasting solution for the problems at the origin of the present debates over accommodation must therefore include (1) Quebec’s withdrawal from any participation in the supposed war on terror, (2) a set of policies of resistance to neoliberalism and in defence of social rights and public services, (3) a language policy capable of advancing French as the language of work and the language of adoption of immigrants, and (4) an immigration policy based on recognition of the rights and aspirations of the newcomers and their genuine economic, social and cultural integration in a Quebec society that is in constant evolution.

These policies are conceivable only in a sovereign Quebec. Indeed, foreign and military policy is within Ottawa’s jurisdiction. So also are the major issues of economic policy and international trade. And the Canadian Constitution of 1982 is a major legal obstacle to any strengthening of our language legislation. Finally, the federal government itself is a major employer, especially in the Outaouais region, and its language of work is generally English, even in the Ottawa-Gatineau area.

It is the continuation of Quebec’s minority status within Canada that precludes the success of the inclusive and pluralist national project that emerged in the 1960s, was affirmed in the Charter of the French Language (Law 101) and has now entered into crisis as a result of the failure of the two referendums and the embrace of imperialism by the major sovereigntist parties. The political struggle of the future in Quebec will be between the conservative fallback on “identity” represented by the ADQ and the renewal of the struggle against national oppression in solidarity with the struggles against imperialism abroad and against racism at home. It is on this terrain that Québec solidaire must take its stand.

(From issue No. 43 of the newspaper Résistance!)

A Quebec view of Venezuela's referendum

The Quebec web publication Presse-toi-à-gauche carries a report on Venezuela's referendum result by David Litvak, writing from La Grita, Venezuela. The title, "Un référendum à la québécoise" refers to the close vote, roughly 51-49% against the proposed constitutional changes -- almost identical to the thin margin separating the successful No from the Yes in Quebec's 1995 sovereignty referendum.

Litvak, who writes as a supporter of Hugo Chávez and the proposed reforms, notes at the outset of his analysis that "the major implication" of the vote is that under the Constitution as it remains the Chavista movement will have to find another candidate to replace Chávez in the next presidential election, in 2013. This, he says, may well prove to be a good thing, as it will force the movement to "depersonalize" itself and develop a more collective leadership. He cites Chávez: "On other occasions, we have managed to convert apparent defeats into moral victories, which then were turned into political victories."

This, says Litvak, is an "important, but not insurmountable, challenge" and the PSUV, the new party of the socialist revolution that is now being organized, can probably be the uniting and driving force behind this democratic exercise.

Like many other observers, Litvak notes that a major factor in the high abstention rate was the confusion over the nature and scope of the reform. This enabled the opposition -- a broad front ranging from the church hierarchy to university professors, orchestrated by the mass media -- to spread all kinds of disinformation about it. He also attributes the lack of clarity to the linking of the issue of presidential re-election with other proposals that would help lay the basis for deepening the Bolivarian revolution. In effect, Litvak says, the referendum had two components: a de facto plebiscitary question on Chávez's political future, and a constitutional dimension embodying a distinct political agenda for the country. As a result, this "national magna carta" became inextricably bound up with "a particular circumstance, that of a man in power".

Litvak also notes that the total number of votes in favour of the reform, 4.5 million, was less than the 5 million persons who had signed up to join the PSUV. This reflected in part the defection of the social-democratic party, Podemos, and the former Defence minister Raúl Baduel, from the ranks of the Chavistas, as he notes. But it also revealed, of course, the immense political challenge facing the PSUV militants as they participate in the debates and grassroots activities that will select the cadres to found the party on a firm political basis.

In Litvak's view, the proposed reforms "did not go far enough". There was "nothing really revolutionary" about them, he says. "It was a step, not a leap. The reform proposal did not resolve the problem of inequality, [control of] the media, or the problem of [people's ] power."

He does not explain how a mere constitutional reform, no matter how radical on paper, could do these things. For that, the masses of Venezuelans will have to continue in their difficult process of self-organization and mobilization in the barrios, factories, farms and the streets, developing much more experience in collective action, decision-making and leadership. There is no reason to think that this process will not continue, under a leadership chastened by the lessons of this setback but committed to deepening Venezuela's national and social revolution.

David Litvak's report can be read at Presse-toi-à-gauche.