[News] Venezuela With and Beyond Chavez

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Wed Mar 6 17:14:14 EST 2013


*Venezuela With and Beyond Chavez*

By Dario Azzellini

"Chávez was one of us", say the poor from the barrios in Caracas, the 
people throughout Latin America, and Bronx residents together with 
probably two million poor people in the US, who now have free heating 
thanks to the Chávez government. Sean Penn said on Chávez: "Today the 
people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor 
people around the world lost a champion." These are sad days.

This article is not going to delve into the many accomplishments of the 
Bolivarian process with regard to healthcare, life expectancy and 
education -- even if no country in the world has improved living 
standards as much over the past 14 years as Venezuela under Chávez. I 
will not write about how Chávez shifted hemispheric relations, helped to 
bring the FTTA to an end and built Latin American and Caribbean unity 
for the first time without the US or Canada. Many articles and writers 
focus on these matters.

This article addresses the different approach to social transformation 
in Venezuela, the idea of revolution as a process and the primacy of the 
constituent power, which has been developed from below in the form of 
popular power throughout the country. Chávez was an ally in the 
construction of people's power and creative building of a new world. 
This is the reason that while I am so sad with the passing of Chavez, I 
am also totally confident about the future of Venezuela. As with the 
people of Venezuela, I know where the power is. In the neighbourhoods, 
in the towns, villages and cities, organized together.

_The Two-Track Approach -- From Above and Below_

The particular nature of the Bolivarian movement stems from the fact 
that social transformation and the redefining of the State have led to 
the creation of a "two-track approach": on the one side, the State, 
institutions and traditional left organizations, and on the other, 
movements and organized society. It is a construction process both "from 
above" as well as "from below". This entails the participation of 
antisystemic organizations and movements, along with individuals and 
organizations which can be characterized as traditional and state 
centred (for instance, unions and political parties).

Both from the government and from the rank and file of the Bolivarian 
process, there is a declared commitment to redefine State and society on 
the basis of an interrelation between top and bottom, and thereby to 
move toward transcending capitalist relations. The State's role is to 
accompany the organized population; it must be the facilitator of 
bottom-up processes, so that the constituent power can bring forward the 
steps needed to transform society. The State has to guarantee the 
material content the realization of the common wealth requires. This 
idea has been stated on various occasions by Chávez, and is shared by 
sectors of the administration and by the majority of the organized 
movements.

_The Communal State_

Since January 2007, Chávez proposed going beyond the bourgeois state by 
building the communal state. He applied more widely a concern 
originating with antisystemic forces, meaning the movements and 
political forces that assume that the state form has to be overcome. The 
basic idea is to form council structures of different kinds, especially 
communal councils, communes and communal cities, which will gradually 
supplant the bourgeois state.

_Communal Councils_

The Communal Councils are a non representative structure of direct 
democracy and the most advanced mechanism of self-organization at the 
local level in Venezuela. The most active agents of change in Venezuela 
have been--and continue to be--the inhabitants of the urban barrios and 
the peasant communities.

Communal Councils began forming in 2005 without any law and as an 
initiative 'from below'. In January 2006 Chávez adopted this initiative 
and began to spread it. In April 2006, the National Assembly approved 
the Law of Communal Councils, which was reformed in 2009 following a 
broad consulting process of councils' spokespeople. The Communal 
Councils in urban areas encompass 150-400 families; in rural zones, a 
minimum of 20 families; and in indigenous zones, at least 10 families. 
At the heart of the Communal Council and its decision-making body is the 
Assembly of Neighbours. The councils build a non-representative 
structure of direct participation which exists parallel to the elected 
representative bodies of constituted power. In 2013, more than 40,000 
Communal Councils had been established in Venezuela.

The Communal Councils are financed directly by national State 
institutions, thus avoiding interference from municipal organs. The law 
does not give any entity the authority to accept or reject proposals 
presented by Communal Councils. The relationship between Communal 
Councils and established institutions, however, is not exactly 
harmonious; conflicts arise principally from the slowness of constituted 
power to respond to demands made by Communal Councils and from attempts 
at interference. The Communal Councils tend to transcend the division 
between political and civil society (i.e., between those who govern and 
those who are governed). Hence, liberal analysts who support that 
division view the Communal Councils in a negative light, arguing that 
they are not an independent civil-society organization, but linked to 
the State. In fact, however, they constitute a parallel structure 
through which power and control is gradually drawn away from the State 
in order to govern on its own.

_Socialist Communes_

At a higher level of self government there is the possibility of 
creating Socialist Communes, which can be formed from various Communal 
Councils in a specific territory. The Communal Councils decide 
themselves about the geography of the Commune These Communes can develop 
medium and long-term projects of greater impact while decisions continue 
to be made in assemblies of the Communal Councils. As of 2013 there are 
more than 200 communes under construction.

The idea of the Commune as a site for building participation, 
self-government and socialism traces back to the communitarian socialist 
tradition of the Paris Commune, and also to Venezuelan Simón Rodríguez, 
who proposed local self government by the people, calling it 'Toparchy' 
(from the Greek 'Topos', place) in the early 19^th century, to 
traditional forms of indigenous collectivism and communitarianism and 
the historical experiences of the Maroons, former Afro-American slaves 
who escaped to remote regions and built self administrated communities 
and settlements/./

Various Communes can form Communal Cities, with administration and 
planning 'from below' if the entire territory is organized in Communal 
Councils and Communes. The mechanism of the construction of Communes and 
Communal cities is flexible; they themselves define their tasks. Thus 
the construction of self-government begins with what the population 
itself considers most important, necessary or opportune. The Communal 
Cities that have begun to form so far, for example, are rural and are 
structured around agriculture, such as the 'Ciudad Comunal Campesina 
Socialista Simón Bolívar' in the southern state of Apure or the/ 
/'/Ciudad Comunal// /Laberinto' in the north-eastern state of Zulia.

_Challenges_

After 13 years of revolutionary transformation, the biggest challenge 
for the process is the structural contradiction between constituent and 
constituted power. Especially since 2007, the government's ability to 
reform has increasingly clashed with the limitations inherent in the 
bourgeois state and the capitalist system. The movements and initiatives 
for self-management and self-government geared toward overcoming the 
bourgeois state and its institutions, with the goal of replacing it with 
a communal state based on popular power have grown. But simultaneously, 
because of the expansion of state institutions' work, the consolidation 
of the Bolivarian process and growing resources, state institutions have 
been generally strengthened and have become more bureaucratized. 
Institutions of constituted power aim at controlling social processes 
and reproducing themselves. Since the institutions of constituted power 
are at the same time strengthening and limiting constituent power, the 
transformation process is very complex and contradictory. Nevertheless, 
the struggles liberated by constituent power in Venezuela are often 
struggles for a different system and not within the existing social, 
political and economic system. The contradiction is grounded in the 
difference between institutional and social logic.

For example, if the job as community promoter and the existence of a 
certain institution is guaranteed only as long as the Communal Councils 
still depend on them, then the interest of the institution and its 
employees in having independent Communal Councils will be minimal. 
Conversely, the individual civil servant as well as the institution as a 
whole will be desperately presenting advances and positive results, but 
always proving that the Communal Councils, Communes and other instances 
of self-administration in whatever sector need the support of the 
corresponding institution. In fact the Ministry of Communes turned out 
to be one of the biggest obstacles to the construction of Communes and 
most of the Communes under construction complain about the Ministry. 
Only the growing organization 'from below', especially the self 
organized Network of Commune Activists (Red de Comuneras y Comuneros), 
bringing together about 70 Communes could bring enough pressure on the 
Ministry of Communes to start changing its politics at the end of 2011. 
They forced the Ministry to register some 20 Communes.

_ _

_Conclusion_

While the 'from above' and 'from below' strategies have maintained 
themselves in the same process of transformation for 13 years and the 
conflictive relationship between constituent and constituted power has 
been the motor of the Bolivarian process, conflicts are increasing. The 
growing organization 'from below' and the development of popular power 
inevitably clash with constituted power. The growing organization 'from 
below' and the development of popular power limit the constituted power 
and overwhelm it if it does not limit them. They can only expand over 
time if they get the upper hand, in which case constituent power would 
profoundly transform constituted power.

I have no doubt that peoples power will expand. The most important 
experience people have had over the past 14 years in Venezuela was that 
they learned they can overcome their marginalization by participation 
and self organization, creating their own solutions. "We are all Chávez".


******************************************

Dario Azzellini, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, lived and 
worked in Venezuela between 4 and months a year from 2003 to 2011. He 
worked with communal councils, communes, workers control, rural and 
urban movements. He has written extensively and directed documentaries 
on Venezuela. He published the internationally acclaimed documentaries 
"Venezuela from below" (2004), "5 factories -- workers control in 
Venezuela" (2006), and "Comuna under construction" (2010). He also 
published the books: "Caracas: Bolivarian city" (Berlin: b books, 2013); 
"Partizipation, Arbeiterkontrolle und die Commune" (Hamburg: VSA, 2012); 
"Venezuela bolivariana. Revolution des 21. Jahrhunderts?"; (Cologne: 
Neuer ISP Verlag) and "Il Venezuela di Chávez", (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 
2006); and several articles in journals in English, Spanish, Portuguese, 
German and Italian.

www.azzellini.net <http://www.azzellini.net/>

-- 
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863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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