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Showing posts with label Chavez Venezuela. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chavez Venezuela. Show all posts

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Venezuela With and Beyond Chavez

By Dario Azzellini - Upside Down World





“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 allay 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 19th 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 8 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
 
 
March 08, 2013
 
 
 

Monday, January 7, 2013

Venezuela without Chavez: A Possible Scenario

By Roberto Lopez – Marea Socialista:




This article is written by a member of the leftist Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide) current of Venezuela’s ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). It is the first of several voices from within the Bolivarian movement to be featured by Venezuelanalysis.com this week, each offering an interpretation of the current situation in relation to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s health and swearing-in, as well as the possible future political scenarios that Venezuela faces.


1) Chavez’s leaving power seems to be a certainty in the short term (from a few months to a year), either through death or because his health will prevent him from returning to active office. If he returns and is sworn in on January 10 or at a later date, his precarious health condition will keep him almost permanently in Cuba and the real running of the country will fall on one or more other individuals.

2) This implies the beginning of a period of profound change in the political leadership of the Bolivarian Revolution. This period could last several months or even several years.

3) The recent and resounding electoral defeats suffered by the opposition in October and December place the post-Chavez political dispute within Chavismo itself. This will continue for at least several months and perhaps a year or two. Currently, the right wing is not in a political position to act offensively to regain power within the country, but obviously that weakness can change as time goes on.

4) We can infer that the present pro-Chavez leadership headed by Maduro and Cabello will deteriorate as time passes. Causes: none of them have the leadership qualities of Chavez and therefore none of them are able to generate the consensus that existed when Chavez was in office. The deterioration of consensus implies a deterioration of governance over national, regional and local institutions. Generally, one can say that the long-term continuation of the Bolivarian Revolution is not assured with the current leadership, which has constituted Chavez’s inner circle and his immediate environment for the past 14 years. We will witness an on-going crisis of governance that will result in constant rearrangements whose actors and trends cannot be accurately predicted.

5) Several processes will occur simultaneously:

a) An internal struggle for a new distribution of power within chavismo (redistribution of control over state institutions and over effective control of the national budget). Although formally they might manage to reach agreements for slicing up the bureaucratic pie, strong shocks will in fact begin to be produced because the country is not a sum of its parts but an organic whole. Those clashes will be concealed initially, but will progressively become more public. This could even lead to violent scenarios, such as attacks against certain leaders of the various pro-Chavez fractions.

b) The deterioration of this leadership for Venezuelans who support the process. This may occur due to the government’s inability to address popular demands around critical issues; for example, labor disputes and collective negotiations involving significant sections of the state (teachers, academics, Guyanese industries, etc.). Chavez will no longer be there to appease people’s emotions with the refrain of “the president didn’t know” or “they’re not complying with the president’s directives.” The errors of the bureaucracy will not be forgiven by the people, as occurred when Chavez firmly held the nation’s leadership.

c) A widespread conspiracy by the “empire” [the US primarily] to penetrate the various civilian and military pro-Chavezleadership circles to promote the reversal of the revolutionary process. This could be supplemented with future scenarios in which pro-Chavez forces and opposition forces unite to achieve the goal of ending the revolution. At the moment, however, those scenarios are not yet possible (thankfully), but they could be created in the short term.

d) In the internal struggle within Chavismo, imperialist forces and their local allies will constantly seek to exert their influence. The empire is likely to attempt to carry out various actions on its own, even violent ones, which could then be blamed on the intra-Chavista struggle. The goal of this would be to add more fuel to the fire and encourage the strengthening of internal tendencies that are more likely to compromise with imperialism.

6) The imperial forces will seek the right moment to end the Bolivarian Revolution. In promoting their initiatives, they will not rule out Libyan or Syrian-type scenarios (i.e., fostering a civil war) to overthrow the Bolivarian government and restore imperial rule over Venezuela.
In conclusion, the removal of Chavez from power opens up a scenario of uncertainty and political crisis in Venezuela, which seriously threatens the continuity of the revolutionary process and opens the door for the international bourgeoisie and their allies to attempt to regain domestic political power.

Given this reality, it is essential that revolutionaries strengthen their organizational activities and joint actions based on broad and democratic debate over the political agenda being raised by popular organizations.

Ensuring the continuation of the revolutionary process will depend on the emergence of new forms of popular collective leadership, which will be born in the heat of the difficult political confrontation that will characterize the months and years ahead.

If this strengthening of alternative revolutionary leadership does not occur, it is likely that reformist trends will end up predominating within the Chavista bureaucracy, pushing for a general agreement with the local bourgeoisie and US imperialism as a way to “save and sustain” the Bolivarian process.

If this latter trend prevails, the re-taking of power by imperialism would progressively occur and the reformist leaders and facilitators of Chavismo would gradually be displaced by more reliable traditional bourgeois leaders. That process could take several years, possibly the entire current presidential term (2013-2019).

The means of avoiding this will always be through the strength of the popular movement led by a truly revolutionary program. This cannot rely on small and tiny groups or tendencies that exist within or outside the PSUV. It will depend on a massive confluence of revolutionary activists (including the military) and social organizations to confront the imperialist conspiracy and reformist reconciliation.

In this strategy — which I believe is the only alternative that exists to save the revolution — we must try out all means for exercising democracy and achieving the broadest possible consensus for allowing unity of action throughout the country.

This article originally appeared in Spanish on la.guarura.net and was translated into English by HavanaTimes.org.

January 07, 2013

Venezuelanalysis