Report on the  Quito Conference
5/17/2003
Dr Paul Cockshott,  Reader in Computing Science at the University of Glasgow.

This report cover two congresses held this month in Latin America, to which I was invited as a Scottish delegate. The first of these was held in Havana at the start of May, the second was held in Quito Ecudor, in the sedond week of May.

Havana
The first conference was called by the Cubans on the role of Marxism in 21st century. Invitations were issued to Marxist theorists internationally Myself and Allin Cottrell, a fellow Scot now resident in the USA were among those invited. We were invited on the strength of the work we had done on the theory of the socialist economy and on the Labour theory of Value. Due to personal circumstances I was not able to attend the Havana congress, but Allin and I prepared a paper on the role of Labour Values in socialist economies. A copy of the paper is attached to this document. Allin agreed to present the paper in my absence from the conference.

I currently do not have a written report on the Havana conference from Allin, but I have had a phone conversation with him about how it went and have communicated with cuban, american and german participants at the congress. These reports concur in saying that after the first day the nature of the congress changed since comrade Fidel decided to participate. It was moved to a larger congress hall, and Fidel gave a number of lengthy presentations on the experience of the Cuban revolution, lasting in total perhaps 5 hours. In particular he emphasised:
1. That he and his co-revolutionaries were Marxian communists prior to launching the revolutionary struggle rather than having converted to Marxism after the sucess of the revolution.
2. He rpeatedly asked the theorists to explain why the cuban revolution had not collapsed in 89 and how come it was still going strong now. He apparently failed to get a convincing answer either from Western Marxists present or from the Cuban Marxist economists, and so went into a lengthy explanation of why it had survived.

Allin says that when he gave our presentation, it got a favourable reception including from Fidel, who was sitting at the front of the audience. However because of the length of Fidel's subsequent presentation, the time for debate on the presentations of others was cut short. However contacts were established with a number of participants whom I met the next week in Quito.

Quito
The Quito meeting was called 'El Neuvo Projecto Historico'. the conference title coincides with that of a new Manifesto or book published in Ecudor to coincide with the meeting. The Manifesto has also being published in other languages including German, Russian and Chinese. An Australian publisher is apparently producing an English edition. The lead author of this Manifesto is Heinz Deitrich Steffan, a german who has lived in Latin America for 28 years and is now one of the leading left wing intellectuals of the continent.

I will recount later in this report what I learned about this 'New Historical Project : the end of capitalism' ,  but first I will explain more about the composition and organisation of the congress.

Organization of Congress
Delegates were invited on 4 bases:

1. Their role as leading activists in the main Latin American Liberation movements, or
2. Their role as intellectual developers of revolutionary theory relevant to the practical policies of Liberation and 21st century socialism.
3. Their role as representatives of state bodies supporting the congress.
4. Their role as members of the sponsoring university.

The first count included representatives of political parties, peasant movements, movements of the indigenous peoples, women’s movements etc. 
It appeared to me that almost every country in Latin America was represented, I heard delegates speak from :
El Salvador, the Zapatistas, Columbia, Cuba, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina.

The second count seemed to include prominent left intellectuals from across the continent who are involved in the development of Liberation theory.Because I do not read Spanish, I was not familiar with them before and had to go on the basis of what I heard from them and others at the meeting. There were three European participant, one from Spain, one from Italy, and me as the Scottish participant.

The 3rd count, included the ambassadors of Cuba and Libya as indications of the support that their governments were giving, and a representative of the Pinchincha provincial parliament ( Lilian  Oliva), which co-sponsored the congress.

The 4th count, which amounted to some 500 to 800 people were members of the student body and staff of the Central University of Ecuador. Hundreds of students participated in the audience listening and asking questions - despite having to pay a delegate fee of $10 each. Each session was moderated by a student, and the practical organisation was largely done by student volunteers. The political attitude and commitment of the students was most impressive.

The congress was apparently funded by a combination of various Ecuadorian provincial parliaments, and by the University. It cost about $27000 to organise, the main cost being the payment of transport costs to foreign speakers like me.
It struck me that it would be difficult to imagine the Scottish Parliament and Glasgow University funding something similar.

I knew comparatively little about the political situation in Latin america, due to the poor reporting of the subject in the UK press. I had to rely on what I heard at the congress to fill me in. Since my knowledge of Spanish is very poor my understanding of the speeches was far from complete.

Features of the Current Situation in Latin America
This is based on the impressions that I got listening to delegates. I will have missed many points due to my poor understanding of Spanish. It seems that the left has made considerable advances in 3 countries: Venezuela, Ecuador and  Brazil. Generally leftist governments have come to power in these countries, though from the reports presented, the government of Chavez in Venezuela seems to be the most genuinely left wing. However the existence of these governments has created significant openings for popular movements in these countries.

These countries along with Cuba face a considerable threat both politically and militarily from the USA. The US has connived at attempts to overthrow the government of Venezuela, which so far have been thwarted by the popular movements. The US is in the process of establishing military bases in the region as part of ‘Plan Columbia’, which though notionally targeted at narcotics trafficking, is really aimed at the popular movements in these countries, in particular at the Columbian revolutionary left which is making significant advances. The view of delegates was that the US was engaged in the re-colonisation of Latin America, going beyond its previous interference in the region in the sense of
1.	Establishing army and naval air bases in the region,
2.	Forcing countries in the region to drop their own currencies and use the US dollar instead. I was astonished when I tried to buy Ecuadorian currency at the airport and discovered that that it no longer existed and that they used dollars.
Cuban delegates said that they feared imminent attack by the US following its occupation of Iraq.

Generally the whole of Latin America suffers from an economic inability to co-ordinate and oppose the US on issues of trade policy and other economic issues.
Cuban ambassador said that there was a fascist dictatorship  over the whole world by Wahsington and London which posed danger to whole human race. They expect US aggression against Cuba. The US aim to create a pretext for an attack. The expulsion of Cuban diplomats from the UN along with action in Iraq amounts to the liquidation of the UN. Publishing lists of so-called terrorist states was aimed to create an excuse for war. The US invader would face total peoples resistance from the army and popular militias.

Columbian delegate said and invasion of Columbia by the US was already underway, many US bases. US has given $13000Million to the Columbian army to suppress revolution. US plunders national resources in form of oil, other minerals, the natural pharmaceuticals of the Amazon etc.

Venezuelans argued that a post capitalist society can be created now, that a new form of state was coming into being. US aimed to control the oil resources of the Andean region, which after the middle-east were the world’s most important reserves. The attempt to throw out Chavez was totally unconstitutional and had it succeeded would have indicated that no Latin American country could have a govt that was not approved of by Washington.

Political Responses
I am summarizing here the conclusion of a number of participants, in particular Heinz Deitrich Steffan from Mexico and the representatives of the Bolivarian movement of Venezuela and the Peruvian Peasant movement.

It was necessary to form a pole of resistance to the US, to move over to the attack instead of being on the defensive. The aim should be to form a regional economic and political block like the EU in South America, with an associated military alliance. The aim must be to fulfill Bolivars vision of a united South America. To do this the left would have to form a temporary block with the protectionist bourgeois interests.

In the longer term it was necessary to move to a new model of constitution and economy – the New Historical Project described below.

New Historical Project
I have not yet been able to read the Manifesto in English. Skimming it in Spanish and talking to conference delegates the key ideas seem to be roughly as follows.

Capitalist society is characterized by 3 key institutions
1.	The market economy
2.	The institutions of representative democracy
3.	The class based state
20th century socialism had never really attacked these institutions at a basic level, whether it was the Social Democratic version of socialism or the Soviet Version. None of them had attempted to change them all. As such none had really offered a viable replacement of Capitalist Civilisation as a whole. To do this the popular movement had to aim to replace the 3 institutions with others:
1.	A non market economy based on a planned economy, and an abolition of money with its replacement by an economy based on the principle of equivalence – understood as an equivalence based on the Marxist theory of value.
2.	The institutions of representative democracy had to be overthrown and replaced by the institutions of participative or direct democracy. The distinction between governors and governed had to be broken down and the people had to exercise power themselves. There seemed to be complete unanimity among delegates from all countries on this point.
3.	The class state had to be replaced by non-class systems of power – I don’t really understand quite what they are proposing in this context.
The key ideas here are those of direct democracy and the democratically planned and computerised economy. I have not yet had a chance to read the chapters of the Manifesto : New Historic Project, on this topic but from conversations with some of the authors of the project the ideas seem very similar to those put forward by what they called the ‘Scottish School’. There were repeated references to the significance of Scotland as a center of socialist thought, and to the fact that Scottish authors had independently arrived at the same conclusions as Latin American ones. This was seen as independently confirming the validity of their conclusions, and was the reason why they invited me to speak.
I was given a 2 hour slot on the afternoon of the 15th for my presentation. They provided simultaneous translation facilities which, those people who understood both English and Spanish said were excellent. They had at about a weeks notice provided a complete Spanish translation of my speech to distribute to the audience. ( I enclose a copy of the speech in English ‘Computers and Economic Democracy’, in practice I made many ad-lib digression to cover extra points). 

My speech was well received with many delegates coming up afterwards to say that it was one of the best in the congress.  There seemed to be general agreement with the arguments I put forward and a feeling that what I was saying coincided with the conclusions of the Latin American left, but that the economic arguments went somewhat beyond what they formulated. It was decided that editions of the book ‘Towards a New Socialism’ should be published in Spanish  as soon as possible. The Argentine publisher of ‘New Historic Project’ says they can have it out early in the new year, with Cuban and Ecudorian editions to follow. A request was made for a copy of Tommy’s book to evaluate that for translation as well. ( I had inadvertently failed to pack copies of our and books in my flight bag before leaving. I will post them next week.).

It is difficult to emphasise how warmly the Scottish contribution was received, this ran from people asking me to autograph their copies of 'El Neuvo Projecto Historico', to people saying how valuable it was to have European socialists coming to the same conclusion, to others saying that they were now totally convinced that a new socialism was feasible.

The organizers of the conference have made a number of suggestions to me.
1.	They want to translate Scottish socialist literature as a mentioned before. 
2.	They want to organize a number of other meetings in Latin America with Scottish participation.
3.	They have asked if the I can next year organise a similar congress to the Quito congress, but in Scotland which will  look at developing ideas for using new technology in the economic and political democratisation of 21st century society.