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 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 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.
