On 22 June Venezuela’s National Assembly approved a major reform to the ‘Organic Law of Communal Councils’. Celebrated by communal activists and deputies in parliament, this is a victory for socialist forces, placing popular power back on the agenda. Communal councils and communes, structures of participatory democracy and collectivised production, are a vehicle for working class power in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution; yet they exist alongside traditional forms of bourgeois democracy. The ruling PSUV socialist party is an electoral coalition, containing radical currents committed to socialist revolution alongside self-serving capitalists hungry for state contracts. Recently, in the face of asphyxiating US sanctions which have cost an estimated $350bn, the PSUV government has pursued capitalist solutions, handing over land, state-owned industries and property to big business. Private profits have grown whilst communes have clamoured for resources. The communal movement has pushed back against this trend and finally secured a reform that recognises and enhances the ability of the working class to organise at grassroots level.
‘The commune or nothing’
Communal councils group together working-class neighbourhoods, organising to address local needs. They link together to form communes, co-operating on a larger scale. This system of participatory democracy and popular power has been a defining feature of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution since 2006, when late socialist president Hugo Chavez built on existing neighbourhood organisations to promulgate the ‘law of communal councils’. Chavez saw the communes as building blocks crucial in the process of transforming Venezuela from ‘oil-rentier’ capitalism to socialism. In the last speech he made before his death in March 2013, Chavez berated ministers for simply renaming everything ‘socialist’ without changing the relations of production and developing participatory democracy. Warning about small islands of socialism being swallowed by the capitalist sea, Chavez famously declared: ‘The commune or nothing!’ This has served as a rallying cry for the communes ever since.
Today there are 49,183 communal councils and 3,641 communes registered nationwide. The vanguard of the grassroots struggle, they have found inventive collective ways to survive the US blockade. After a public consultation process generated more than 8,000 proposals, the reform seeks to simplify legislation in order to facilitate the growth and development of the communes. It establishes clear term lengths and functions for elected spokespeople and clarifies processes for ensuring accountability and recall of those in elected positions. Communal assemblies are now recognised as a form of government with their decisions considered binding. Other reforms give communes easier access to financing and more of a role in guarding against corruption. However, they constantly come up against the structures of the existing state: land ministers delaying handing over land deeds; mayors and governors refusing to approve communal projects in their municipalities; communes struggling to get seeds, fuel, machinery and transportation as corrupt officials divert goods for sale on the unofficial market. The reform will only have bite if backed up by popular pressure.
People power in practice
‘El Panel 21’ in Caracas, one of the most established communes, is an example of what such organisation can achieve. Founded by members of the Alexis Vive Patriotic Front and with an explicit commitment to socialist revolution, the Panel runs a textile factory, a community radio station, a bakery, a communal bank and more. As sanctions drove up inflation and scarcity the commune stepped up its efforts. A disused swimming pool was turned into a fishery, a sugar-packing plant was repurposed to produce animal feed, reclaimed land and buildings were converted into urban allotments and a pig farm, enabling subsidised food to be distributed door-to-door to vulnerable residents. Brigades relocated to the countryside, working with rural communes to learn agriculture and bring food into Caracas directly through the ‘people-to-people’ network, cutting out capitalist speculators.
Whilst the communards of El Panel live in city tower blocks, the Ali Primera commune in Urachiche stretches across remote mountainous areas with some communities only reachable by foot. Nevertheless the commune co-ordinates agricultural production, a pharmacy and eight schools. The neighbouring Hugo Chavez commune in Yaracuay produces and distributes natural personal hygiene and cleaning products at affordable prices, donating them to local schools and medical centres.
El Maizal in Lara is one of Venezuela’s most famous communes, producing corn, raising cattle and pigs, developing the chains of production to roast coffee and mill cornflour for arepas, a dietary staple. El Maizal produce the seeds, sow, harvest, process, and sell produce below market prices in the communal stores. Such ‘circuits of communal production’ are being emulated across the communal movement. Surplus is reinvested in social needs such as schools, housing and paved roads, as well as increasing productive capacity.
Though the communes make up only a small proportion of Venezuela’s economy they play a crucial role in food production and social housing. The ‘people-to-people’ initiative provides over 100,000 meals across 300 schools in seven states each day whilst an estimated 70% of the 4.6 million units of social housing built by the ‘great housing mission’ have been constructed by communal housing assemblies with support from the state. Yet there is constant tension with capitalist forces to take over sanctions-stricken state projects under the guise of finding ‘immediate’ solutions. For instance an agro-industrial corridor runs through the territory of the Hugo Chavez commune. Due to a lack of fuel and inputs, production there ground to a halt in 2016 and state-owned companies were transferred to private agro-industry – where they then remained idle due to lack of investment. Now the commune is fighting to recover these factories.
Raising political consciousness via communal schools for popular empowerment and workshops run by the independent ‘Communard Union’ is a central task. As Anacoana Marin from El Panel argues, ‘we need to put the capital “P” back into politics. The commune must be the driving force behind our economic activity. We are trying to build a communal society that is antagonistic to the capitalist system; we are moving toward socialism in a world system that puts profit before everything else.’ With presidential elections on the horizon next year, PSUV President Nicolas Maduro Maduro has pledged 2023 will be the year of the commune. The working class of Venezuela will hold him to his word.
Sam McGill
