[News] The Commune is the Supreme Expression of Participatory Democracy: A Conversation with Anacaona Marin of El Panal Commune

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14435


  The Commune is the Supreme Expression of Participatory Democracy: A
  Conversation with Anacaona Marin of El Panal Commune

By Cira Pascual Marquina – April 19, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

/The Alexis Vive Patriotic Force, which has deep roots in Caracas’ 23 de 
Enero barrio, began planning a commune years before Chavez even proposed 
the communal path toward socialism. Yet when Chavez announced the plan 
to join communal councils into a higher form of organization, Alexis 
Vive wholeheartedly embraced the initiative and has since then built a 
highly successful commune called El Panal Commune[1] involving some 
13,000 people. We spoke with a key cadre of El Panal about this project 
that is both economic and political to find out how it is coping with 
the crisis escalated by US aggressions./

*The commune is usually thought of a space of construction – for the 
political and economic reorganization of society –, but it is also a 
space of resistance. Let’s talk about the commune today, in a period 
where Venezuela is under attack by imperialism. *

There is a confrontation of models, a clash of two paradigms not only in 
Venezuela and in Latin America, but also worldwide. One of the questions 
in the debate is: who is the historical subject? For us, that is the 
question of who is it that activates, who lights up the field, who 
pushes changes forward. And when we reflect on this issue, which means 
thinking about our own practice, we guide our interpretation by the 
proposal that developed with Comandante Chavez.

Chavez developed a hypothesis after a process of maturing, after a 
rigorous analysis of the Venezuelan and continental realities, and after 
a reflection on the revolutionary potential under our feet (based also 
on a commitment to justice for the poor that was there from the start). 
His hypothesis was: The commune is the historical subject, the commune 
and its people, the /comuneros/, that is where the revolution really 
begins. So we made this proposal ours, we committed to it.

We were aware that the proposal and our embracing it was going to be 
attacked from its onset, at its genesis. When Chavez first raised the 
banner of socialism in 2006, when he said that the Bolivarian Revolution 
must be socialist, when he said that a vote for him is a vote for 
socialism, he committed himself and the people to a collective project 
of rupture. Well, that is where we find the seed of the commune. 
Self-government and economic emancipation go hand-in-hand with 
socialism, with a people in power. So that is where we find the initial 
seeds for the commune: in [Chavez’s 2006] proposal to build a socialist 
“patria.”

It became clear to us then that there was going to be a new level of 
confrontation. We knew that the path towards socialism was going to be 
demonized, that contradictions would pop up everywhere, inside and 
outside. So we can say that the communes hadn’t even been born yet, and 
we were already in resistance! But the truth is that we have been in 
resistance for more than five hundred years.

Today, we are not only resisting imperialism. We are also resisting old 
forms of production and their diverse forms of domination: from the 
organization of education and affects, to the organization of the formal 
political sphere and the economy.

Why is there conflict? We are making a counter-hegemonic proposal to a 
system that is powerful, a system that seems part and parcel of what the 
human being is. In the face of this system, the communal subject stands 
tall and says: /Hey, this doesn’t have to be so, this is not the only 
option/. The communal subject is the one that affirms that capitalism is 
not a natural occurrence, it is an imposition.

The communes are counter-hegemonic spaces with a vocation for hegemony. 
 From our commune, we aim to show that another organization of society 
is possible, that power must be reorganized, and that power should be in 
the hands of the people. That means combining new economic relations 
with an exercise of power in the commune’s territory.

*Here we are in the midst of El Panal Commune, which has a range of 
productive projects: from a bakery and a textile factory to cultivated 
land and an industrial packaging plant. How is all this organized?*

El Panal Commune has some specific characteristics. We, as Alexis Vive, 
began to think about building a commune in 2006 and shortly after we 
began working on it. However, the Law of Communes 
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5858> wasn’t promulgated until 2009. 
The law states that communal councils would be the embryo that would 
foster the formation of a commune. Here, by contrast, the forming of the 
commune followed its own path.

This commune comes out of a practice and a set of symbols that we put on 
the street. In our case, the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force generated a 
collective practice and a discourse that pointed the way [with Chavez] 
towards the commune. This worked quite well: the community here, in the 
central part of 23 de Enero, picked up the idea and ran with it.

Here, in these territories, the “/Panalitos por la Patria/” [“Beehives 
for the Homeland"], which are small working and discussion groups] are 
the DNA of the communal body. The Panalitos are formed by people from 
the community with a high degree of commitment to the commune. They are 
the engines of the communal initiative.

Additionally, we have /brigades/, which is a term that the Alexis Vive 
Patriotic Force chose after much debate. The debate touched on the 
subject of the Chiliying Commune,[2] which had various structures of 
participation for the people: councils, brigadists and producers. The 
division was based on the commitment to work and struggle. The brigades 
were made up of a militant group of communards with a life-commitment to 
the struggle. In our commune, these brigades are made up of professional 
cadres, and they take on the larger issues of production and 
distribution in the community. They are also, it almost goes without 
saying, highly politicized units.

Finally, we have the /associated work collectives/, which are the 
communal groups directly involved with producing goods and services. 
Since the commune is not an appendix of the state or the government, it 
must be autonomous and it must generate the resources it requires to 
address the community’s needs. The associated work collectives are 
spaces for direct production, and the surplus from their production goes 
back to the commune and thus to the community.

All this relates to the commune’s process of grassroots planning and 
administration of resources. Some of our resources go to sustaining a 
“/comedor popular/” [people’s canteen], some to communications, some to 
the community’s medical expenses, and some to transportation and 
infrastructure. We also have resources allotted for contingencies. All 
of these resources come from the associated work collectives. After all, 
the commune is not just a cultural, social and political organization, 
it is also an /economic/ organization.

There is another “higher” element to the commune’s organization: the 
/patriotic assembly/, the space where comuneros gather to decide 
collectively what must be done, and how, through participatory democracy.

*Let’s come back to the situation today: the imperialist aggression. In 
the past couple of months, we have witnessed a new form of war with the 
electrical blackout and the attacks on the electric grid. Tell us about 
how you have organized resistance in the commune in this context.*

We are the daughters and sons of Chavez. We listened to his words and we 
learned. As a result of that, we understood that when you go up against 
capital and against imperialism, there is only one option: to prepare. 
If we are going to tell imperialism that we are no longer its backyard – 
that we have chosen the path to full independence and on top of that we 
are transitioning towards socialism –, then we must understand that we 
are going to be in a war with a military superpower.

A new phase of aggression against our country has begun. They try to 
restrict our access to food and they have implemented a financial 
blockade and, more recently, an oil embargo. They also attack us 
culturally. They try to inspire fear in us. Most recently, they attacked 
our electrical system, which is fundamental for modern life.

We were aware that this was coming, so we prepared for a war economy, 
through organization and work. We also prepared through research and [by 
paying attention to] popular creativity. A contingency plan was in 
place. So when this new phase of the aggression began, we were ready for 
it with the necessary resources.

Our planning allowed us to build – in the midst of the blackout – a 
diesel-powered electrical grid for our collective spaces. In fact, the 
commune acts as a kind of state or government in everyday life, and it 
does so also when faced with a contingency or aggression. Obviously, 
that [alternative power supply] made for a less hostile environment 
during the blackout.

*Many people do not know about the spontaneous forms of solidarity that 
emerged during the blackout. I witnessed beautiful gestures during those 
days, especially among my neighbors, both Chavistas and opposition. What 
happened here in 23 de Enero?*

It was an all-out exercise of violence against our lives! But when faced 
with ugly, catastrophic situations, popular kindness, solidarity and 
sisterhood blooms! This is not just discourse: people were brave and 
noble. We don’t believe that the human being is selfish by nature. 
Humans are formed in society; the human being is part of a whole, of a 
collective. The genesis of humanity is in the commons, in working 
together towards shared ends, and those collective instincts flourish 
when people face a war-like situation.

I can give you an example from our experience. We organize weekly fairs 
where fruits and vegetables are sold at very low prices through the 
“Pueblo a Pueblo <https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13862>” 
initiative [direct coordination with campesinos]. During the blackout, 
we sold on credit [since the electronic payment infrastructure was 
offline], and the neighbours came through. One by one, they came back 
and paid their debts when the blackout was over. One can see there that 
the response from the people was not selfish. People didn’t take 
advantage of the situation, even though they could have. Instead, those 
days were characterized by collective consciousness.

*In describing popular power I often refer to the trilogy of 
self-government, self-determination, and self-defense. If the commune 
sometimes functions as a state, as you said, that means communes 
generate a situation of dual power. This could lead to tensions between 
the existing state and the commune. *

When Chavez promoted the idea of the commune, what he did was very 
daring. In fact, much of what was advanced in terms of the law was done 
via the Enabling Act [the National Assembly had given Chavez the power 
to legislate by presidential decree] since his proposal was sure to rub 
the establishment the wrong way. By doing so, Chavez broke with the 
logic of the state.

Alvaro Garcia Linera talks about “creative tensions” that allow for new 
things to happen. When you pull away from /constituted/ power, that 
opens a space for the new to bloom: that flower springs forth from the 
creative tensions. We welcome contradictions. If we didn’t have them, it 
would mean that we wouldn't have a project. Instead, we would be part 
and parcel with our society’s hegemonic logic, which is capitalist.

On the question of dual power: we don’t think of it in terms of a 
parallel state... Instead, we consider the communes to be the 
crystallization of a proposal left by President Chavez. He understood 
that the commune, through self-government and autonomous popular 
economic activity, would bring about the new state, a communal state. 
But all that is a process under construction.

As I was saying earlier, we encounter contradictions everywhere. 
Although some [state] institutions may be somewhat more hostile than 
others, we can also say that our commune has [in general] benefited from 
the goodwill of people within the state, people who have cast their lot 
with the commune. We have received economic and technical support from 
the state, and that has helped us build popular power…

We know that tensions and contradictions will remain, and we welcome 
them since we do not seek a static situation. Rather, we seek change, 
and change only happens when there are contradictions.

*Is it fair to say, however, that the commune is not in the forefront of 
the government’s political discourse now?*

Absolutely. Look, when Chavez became a public figure, many from the left 
didn’t understand that they had to change course, that the only way 
forward was with Chavez. Likewise, many within Nicolas Maduro’s 
government maintain the old conception of the state and don’t understand 
that the commune is the goal.

However, that is what the Bolivarian Revolution is: a combination of 
very diverse currents. Within the Revolution there is a latent debate 
about the commune. Our role is to show that the commune is indeed the 
historical subject. We show this through our example, and, in doing so, 
we hope to make a rupture with the old ways and become hegemonic.

Our contribution to this big debate is through our practice, through 
work. Our constructive criticism can be found in our concrete example. 
Building a commune brings forth a new culture, a new form of doing 
politics, and new economic relations... Against the logic of 
representative democracy, we propose participatory and protagonic 
democracy, and the commune is the supreme expression of the latter.

*The media discourse tends to criminalize poor barrio‐dwellers. It has 
been going on for a long time. Recently, there has been a great deal of 
focus on “colectivos” [a common form of grassroots organization in urban 
Latin America and Venezuela in particular] to make them seem as if they 
were merely gangs or paramilitary organizations. Has that affected your 
projects in the 23 de Enero barrio?*

Indeed there is nothing new about all that. In the Fourth Republic the 
“ñangaras”[3] or the “tupamaros”[4] were the source of all evil. Later 
the Bolivarian Circles <https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/131> were 
criminalized. Frankly, every expression of popular organization that 
isn’t submissive has always been criminalized in history. That’s because 
popular organization is, indeed, a problem for the system. The mass 
media has always demonized the people when they organize, so it 
shouldn’t surprise us.

Now, in this new phase of the imperialist aggression, we can see that 
popular action is once again being criminalized. They are in a process 
of rebranding “colectivos” as terrorist organizations, as the maximum 
expression of evil. Imagine that, poor Chavistas in the street, 
barrio‐dwellers defending their territories! That should be stopped, and 
the most efficient way is criminalization. Why do they do this? To 
instill fear into the people, to keep poor people from organizing.


    Notes

[1] /Panal /means beehive or honeycomb in Spanish.

[2] The Chiliying Commune was a pioneer commune in Honan province in 
China. It was subject of a classic study by Li Chu, Inside a People’s 
Commune, that Chavez encouraged people to read.

[3] /Ñangara/ is a term used to refer to communists. Initially, it had 
negative connotations, but Venezuelan leftists later used it to identify 
themselves.

[4] /Tupamaro/ was a term used to refer to the radical urban left. It 
was originally used by a revolutionary Uruguayan movement of the 60s and 
70s.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20190419/6bd1cc7f/attachment.htm>