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<h1 class="reader-title">The Commune is the Supreme Expression
of Participatory Democracy: A Conversation with Anacaona Marin
of El Panal Commune</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Cira Pascual Marquina –
April 19, 2019<br>
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<p><em>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.</em></p>
<p><strong>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. </strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>comuneros</em>, that is where the revolution
really begins. So we made this proposal ours, we
committed to it.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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: <em>Hey, this
doesn’t have to be so, this is not the only option</em>.
The communal subject is the one that affirms that
capitalism is not a natural occurrence, it is an
imposition.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>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?</strong></p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5858">Law of
Communes</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Here, in these territories, the “<em>Panalitos por la
Patria</em>” [“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.</p>
<p>Additionally, we have <em>brigades</em>, 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.</p>
<p>Finally, we have the <em>associated work collectives</em>,
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.</p>
<p>All this relates to the commune’s process of
grassroots planning and administration of resources.
Some of our resources go to sustaining a “<em>comedor
popular</em>” [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 <em>economic</em>
organization.</p>
<p>There is another “higher” element to the commune’s
organization: the <em>patriotic assembly</em>, the
space where comuneros gather to decide collectively
what must be done, and how, through participatory
democracy.</p>
<p><strong>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.</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>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?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 “<a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13862">Pueblo
a Pueblo</a>” 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.</p>
<p><strong>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. </strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Alvaro Garcia Linera talks about “creative tensions”
that allow for new things to happen. When you pull
away from <em>constituted</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Is it fair to say, however, that the commune
is not in the forefront of the government’s
political discourse now?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>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?</strong></p>
<p>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
<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/131">Bolivarian
Circles</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<p>[1] <em>Panal </em>means beehive or honeycomb in
Spanish.</p>
<p>[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.</p>
<p>[3] <em>Ñangara</em> is a term used to refer to
communists. Initially, it had negative connotations,
but Venezuelan leftists later used it to identify
themselves.</p>
<p>[4] <em>Tupamaro</em> 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.</p>
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