‘The issue of people’s power is the ability of the people to take action and take control…to appropriate this new structure which ultimately means the democratisation of the state in order to establish socialism’ (Comuna member, Barinas)
How do you build socialism in a country where the capitalist state has not been overthrown by force? This is the question facing Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution as it fights to construct what President Hugo Chavez has described as a socialism of the 21st century. It has ensured oil revenues are used to fund health, education, housing and food programmes, has nationalised many key companies and banks and is redisributing unproductive land. Through its radical constitution, referenda and mobilisations for national and local elections, the Bolivarian Revolution has given the masses a real sense of engagement with the political process.
However, despite this massive empowerment of the working class, the Venezuelan bourgeoisie remains firmly entrenched. It controls two thirds of the country’s media; 5% of the population still own around 70% of the land – and landowners have organised hit squads to defend their property, murdering at least 300 campesinos in the last 12 years. A state of dual power exists: just under 60% of banks remain under private control; the bourgeoisie maintains private hospitals alongside the free health care system of Barrio Adentro and elite universities operate alongside free Bolivarian universities.
It is in this context that in 2007 President Chavez called for a ‘new geometry of power’ and an ‘explosion of communal power’ to drive forward the Bolivarian process.
Explosion of communal power
The communal councils are key to this, building power from the grassroots up. There are now more than 30,000 across the country. They are central to the organisation and politicisation of the mass of the working class, creating a forum where politics are discussed and practical measures such as organising literacy campaigns are put in place, as well as giving local people direct control of transforming their own communities. Indigenous communal councils have been created to ensure that the voice of Venezuela’s minorities – amongst the poorest sectors of the population and spread across remote areas – is also heard. The councils have access to direct governmental funding via communal banks, allowing them to bypass the bureaucracy and corruption still endemic in many layers of local government, especially those controlled by the opposition.
The communal councils are mandated to work on the principles of ‘solidarity, cooperation, collectivism, social control, liberty, equity, justice, voluntary work and social equality’. Community decisions are reached through assemblies at which all residents above the age of 15 can vote and where specialist committees dealing with, for example, water and electricity supplies, are elected on a rotational system and subject to recall.
These councils take on responsibility for resolving local issues: in Emiliano Hernandez council in a barrio of Caracas, this has included providing street lighting and adequate water pipes as well as food and housing. In other areas, it may be rubbish collection, bus services, crime reduction or telecommunications. The councils are also playing a key role in Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission – which has constructed nearly 96,000 housing units in its first seven months and aims to build nearly three million homes over the next seven years to resolve Venezuela’s long-term housing shortage. For, as Chavez put it when launching the mission in April 2011: ‘Nobody knows how to build houses better than the people…if we want to put an end to poverty, then we must give power to the poor. This is the main principle of the socialist revolution’.
Comuna: the next step towards socialism
Now the plan is to push people’s power further, encouraging councils to form larger networks called comunas, or communes (see FRFI 223) to promote cooperation for food production, transport, and other projects such as the San Augustin metrocable in Caracas. In Carora, capital of Municipality Pedro Leon Torres, the flourishing communal councils are being encouraged to come together to manage the municipal budget.
And, beyond the comuna, the communal, socialist town. In Barinas, in northwest Venezuela, the newly-formed town of Antonio Jose de Sucre is discussing a whole new way of organising, based on socialist principles. The town is pioneering schooling based on a Bolivarian curriculum; its campesino collective is discussing the reforestation and protection of the Amazonian land destroyed in the past by transnational lumber companies as well as the formation of peasant militias to protect the town against thugs hired by wealthy landowners.
This is socialism in construction, street by street, barrio by barrio, chipping away at the power of the old corrupt bourgeois state and driving the Bolivarian Revolution forwards.
* See the film Comuna: under construction (Daniel Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, 2010)
for a real picture of the dynamic process underway.
Michael Christou and Cat Alison
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 224 December 2011/January 2012
