Communes in Caracas

Communal organization includes the city

CCS - 07/09/11

Among the aims of community organization is that of building the communal State, where power is exercised directly by the people, through self-government, with an economic model of social property and endogenous development.

Based on this premise, 236 communes and more than 9,000 communal councils have been established, according to information from the Ministry of Popular Power for the Communes.

Through this process the city of Caracas has turned into a space full of examples of self-government.

Socioeconomic model

In the Capital District around 44 sectors exist that are in the process of building communes in order to lay the foundations for Venezuelan socialism.

In the Antimano ward, 18 communal councils of the Carapita sector and part of Santa Ana organised to establish the Victoria Socialist Commune.

Concrete block production by the Ezequiel Zamora Commune, Antimano, Caracas

Edgar Astudillo, the commune’s spokesperson, reports that the developing socioeconomic model now has four collective work units for the production of goods and services, working under the criteria of reinvesting profits back into the community.

Blacksmithing, concrete block making, carpentry, textiles and baking are the businesses established with an investment of 924,000 BsF that was authorized by president Hugo Chavez through the Micro-financing Development Fund (Fondemi), in June 2010.

More power and consciousness

The experience of the communes is based on self-government under the Organic Law of Popular Power, as the “set of actions through which the organized communities directly assume the management of projects, the carrying out of works and services in order to improve the quality of life in its geographical area”.

Blanca Araujo, spokesperson for the commune-in-construction, El Paraiso de Maisanta, of Cota 905, Santa Rosalia ward, defines the commune building process, from her experience, as an “organization of the people to solve their problems”. She adds that “with the commune we have more power and more consciousness of the problems we face”.

This commune, a year in the making, has a route that covers the Guzman Blanco sector on Cota 905 towards Quinta Crespo. The resources it receives are used for community projects.

La Pastora is another example that is adopting the communal model. “Firstly, we met as a promotional team for social and political activities in the area. When the President put out the call to form communes, we decided that this was a way to make a reality of the goals of the revolutionary process”, recalls Milagros Hernandez, spokesperson of the Los Mecedores commune in construction, in La Pastora ward.

They have just established a communal house acquired with 650,000 BsF granted by the Government of Capital District. In that space they will install an Infocentre and a textile company as socioeconomic projects.

Extending the geographic axis

In 2008, locals from the El Observatorio sector in 23 de Enero [neighbourhood] and part of the San Juan ward, which has12 communal councils, formed the Juan 23 Commune, made up of  11,526 inhabitants who share the same territory and history.

Nelson Solorzano, one of the promotors of this organization, said that they are now expanding their axis of activity. They meet with nine communes in west Caracas and make economic exchanges to break with the capitalist market which causes most of the problems the communes are struggling against.

Socialist spaces

The Organic Law of the Communes stipulates that these social organizations are “a socialist space that, as local entities, are defined by the integration of neighbourhood communities with a shared memory and history, cultural features, traits and customs that are recognized in the territory that they occupy and in the productive activities that are the basis of their livelihood”. Among its aims is to promote mechanisms for education and training in the communities and promote the popular defence of human rights.

Translated by Owen Richards 

The ideological map of the revolution

By Neftali Reyes

Translated by Owen Richards

These last twelve years have been in preparation for the “critical point” that inevitably approaches. It is a time that defines society’s direction. Everything done up to this point has been building towards this historic moment.

The Revolution, thanks to the guiding and unifying thread of its comandante, has continued to advance successfully through these turbulent years of ferocious struggle against the empire and its lackeys, and also of violent internal struggles amongst the currents that fight to lead the Revolution. The battle has raged endlessly on both fronts.

That’s how revolutions go – moments of euphoric advance along with tough, dispiriting and confusing moments. That’s why a leader is indispensable to a revolution, to give it the coherence it needs to avoid falling off the rails. And that task is complete. To have arrived at this stage is a feat in itself.

We now approach a decisive battle that will be decided by three basic factors: firstly, ideology, secondly, an active mass imbued with this ideology, [and thirdly, the masses] following the leader’s directives. This trilogy: ideology, mass and leader will decide the contest.

The situation is at once both dangerous and promising. We’ve got a leader; we have the potentials of an active mass that has been tested in previous battles, such as April [2002] and the oil sabotage [of 2002-3]. The 27 of February [i.e. the Caracazo of 1989] taught us the need for organization, for leadership, and that only this way can we win such battles. We’ve learned the need for clear political objectives and we have both good and bad experiences in battle.

We have failed to internalize the ideological struggle, to understand its logic and to use that understanding to place ourselves in the historic moment and assume the role it sets for us.

Victory is impossible without a strong and clear ideological delineation. The battlefronts are defined by ideology, which overflows the boundaries of political militancy and imposes its logic. This explains how parties and former leaders of the Revolution are today sitting at the same table where the assassination of leaders and militants was planned, sitting with Adecos [members of Democratic Action] and Copeyanos [members of COPEI], sitting with the capitalists. Ideology erases shame.

It’s not possible to understand the historic moment without having an ideological map, which supersedes the political map. That means ideological militancy will be more important than political militancy.

The battlefields are being outlined more and more. Chavez rallies the Revolutionary side with the slogan, “those that want a homeland come with me”. That means those that want genuine Socialism – which is the only way to have homeland, to have humanity.

Hence, it is mandatory to define socialist ideology. We can put forward some aspects here:

·        The human being at the center of all endeavours.

·        Life as the motive of all effort.

·        Nature as the basis of everything.

·        The Consciousness of Social Duty linked with Social Property in the means of production administered by the National State.

·        Internationalism.

·        To be always on the side of the weak, of the fighters, of the Revolutionaries.

Only an ideological map allows us to take successful positions in the war to build Socialism and defend humanity. History – that unequaled revolutionary teacher – is very clear in her lessons, we must always go back to them, keeping them under our pillows.

The battle of 2012 – The revolution, the people and the armed forces

The following is an article I have translated from the Frente Francisco de Miranda youth organisation’s weekly magazine Semenario Signos: 

The battle of 2012 – The revolution, the people and the armed forces

The counter-revolution, with its inability to win via electoral means, has a plan, with international backing, to generate violence, destabilisation and intervention before the 2012 elections. Such is shown by the attacks of the right wing’s spokespersons and their media that ranged from calling for Chavez’s resignation, to making attacks against the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), to attacking the National Electoral Commission.

In the face of these threats, our Comandante advises us: “We must prepare ourselves for the scenario that they call plan B, the Yankee embassy, the Yankee empire, the CIA is preparing, before this disaster for them, which I previously referred to as an organic, structural impossibility for them, of defeating us in the electoral sphere. The continuity and the future of the Bolivarian Revolution are in the unity, organisation and consciousness of the civic and military People”.

The ultra-right argues that the FANB is preparing a coup in the case an unfavourable vote for Chavez. Their strategy is to spread in the world press that Chavez is a coup-plotter and that the FANB cannot be guarantors of the process because they are ideologically committed [to Chavez].

The defence minister, General Carlos Mata Figueroa, accuses the Venezuelan counter-revolutionaries of fomenting subversive acts against the Armed Forces, while emphasising the extremely high level of soldiers’ consciousness. 

The Venezuelan Armed Forces has shown itself to be a guarantor of the Constitution and to be more dignified than ever, not like in the Fourth Republic when they encouraged all kinds of abuse against the people like the destruction of electoral results that favoured revolutionary parties, and more recently with the participation of the entire bourgeois high command in the coup de etat against comandante Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution.

Other elements of this conspiracy are the so-called Coalition for Democratic Unity (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática - MUD) agitating against the supposed increase in crime in Caracas and in the country’s interior and against the minister of the prison system, Iris Varela, for giving inmates soft treatment, because for the MUD, the solution to crime is to repress the People.

In this regard, the interior and Justice minister, Tareck El Aissami, pointed out that the MUD has a clear agenda of destabilisation. He claimed that groups linked to the Unity Table intend to carry out a guarimba [road blockades], threatening to cut off Los Valles del Tuy and Valencia and participating in the name of the transport workers, of the main routes of the states of Miranda, Carabobo, Tachira, Lara and Zulia, attempting to promote an agenda of violence and fear in every state of the country.

At the same time as president Chavez’s popularity has reached 58%, they seek through the oppositionist MUD to put out a call for Chavez to resign. Presidential pre-candidate Oswaldo Alvarez Paz formulated the request, which is nothing other than yet another media attack to enhance their discredited leaders at the same time that at the international level there is the false perception that in Venezuela there is widespread discontent with the leadership of Comandante Chavez.

So far, the PSUV has signed up more than 400,000 at 10,450 recruitment posts set up around the country. It seeks to guarantee that the party’s rank and file win the battle of 2012 in the name of the Bolivarian Revolution and Comandante Chavez. And that is the correct strategy to win the elections and consolidate Bolivarian socialism.

Chavez's use of Twitter - "a milestone in the history of our ideas"

Chavez, the revolution and Twitter a year later

May 1, 2011

Eliades Acosta Matos¹

Revolucion o Muerte

President Chavez’s Twitter account, @Chavezcandanga, debuted on April 27, 2010, at 9:43pm. After one year, the balance sheet is impressive: using this social network, the Bolivarian president has published 933 tweets – short messages of up to 140 characters - has 1 432 740 followers and has been included on 39 461 lists. Its runaway success has necessitated the creation of a mission specifically to attend to the thousands of messages that are received every day and gave rise to a “Union of Socialist Twitterers”.

The most important thing about this phenomenon, initiated by the theoretical and practical prime mover of this promising current called ‘Socialism of the 21^st century’, is that it shows that the new information technologies can and should be utilized without fear or reservation, in the difficult task of changing the world and placing it on more just and humane foundations. They do not have to play a fatal, demobilizing or alienating role, or be a means of diffusing frivolity and nonsense, nor must they be docile instruments in the hands of the programs of world counterrevolution, especially those that fight 24/7 on the frontline of the culture wars.

It is not going out on a limb to claim that Chavez’s decision to set up a Twitter account and make it serve the purpose of making his government leadership transparent and open new channels of contact with the people, can be considered one of the most important strategic actions taken by revolutionary forces on the world scale in the struggle to overthrow their own limits, taboos and myths, and advance toward the transformation of a reality that has little similarity to that which Karl Marx or Lenin faced in their time. Injustice cannot be revolutionized without knowing the keys of each age, or refusing to take advantage of its transformational tools – including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs.

Can anyone doubt that if Marx lived in our time he would have a web page, and Lenin a Twitter account? Would Marti have spurned the enormous information and communication possibilities the internet offers us today?

But if backward approaches and fear of change is harmful, neither is it enough to formally agree with these propositions, after all, they’re so obvious they cannot be denied. To use these social networks to make revolution implies a deep change in the verticalist and centralist mentality - sadly inherited by the left from previous historical experiences – and placing themselves on an equal footing, without a centre or periphery, alongside the people who use these technologies, including our enemies that use them heavily. And this means, in itself, an enormous strategic step in the march of development, democratization and the renewal of socialist forces. Their future and its success in the struggle depends upon it.

Eliades Acosta Matos

As such, that discrete, telegraphic first tweet Chavez made one year ago will go down as a milestone in the history of our ideas. As with all transcendental things, it happened naturally, without pretense. Its brilliance was not visible to the naked eye; it lies within, in its subaltern significance, and in what it means for the future, and the challenge to emulate, but not imitate it.

What is known as the “Twitter Revolution” or the “Cyber Revolution” merits a more detailed analysis. For now, it’s enough to say that the front line of the secular struggle for progress and social justice also passes through here. The confrontation that begins in the political or economic sphere is decided in the symbolic and ideological sphere.

“Twitter is the best way to find out what’s new in your world”, says one of the slogans of the promoters of that social network. A sly Dr Marx of our epoch would no doubt add, ironically, “ … but the point is to change it”.

With patience and constancy, amidst his enormous tasks and responsibilities, Chavez is doing just that.

And it is going out to millions.

^1. Eliades Acosta Matos is the former director of Cuba’s Jose Marti National Library (1997–2007) and currently head of the Committee on Culture of the Cuban Communist party's Central Committee. He is the author of The Apocalypse according to Saint George.

Chavez : “The idea of a new International is catching on”

Hugo Chavez first raised the idea for establishing a new International association of socialist parties in 2007. In November 2009 he again raised the idea at a meeting of left-wing political parties that was held in Caracas.

Chavez at the International Meeting of Left Parties

Since then, the idea seemed to have been forgotten. However, in this short excerpt from his speech to the executive cabinet, assembled governors and the Political Bureau of the Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) on 16 July, Chavez revived the idea of a new International:

“Well, in truth I feel really strengthened by the way you and our Party shaped this modest document, these five lines, and now they return to me with a sixth line, which really was missing: the international line, a formation of some networks of Bolivarian circles, and different links, a network, a mesh of Latin American and Caribean organizations, of solidarity and political action, heading towards the creation of international structures, respecting the ones that already exist.

“Now, we raised an idea, just one idea for the world. But we need to develop it, to explain it well, because it tended to be rejected initially by sectors of the international Left, the idea of a new International, not the fifth, a new socialist International for the 21^st century. This is a debate that started in Europe, and I think that with the world hotting up in these recent days and months of this feverish year, with big battles in Europe and North Africa, and in Latin America as always, the idea seems to be catching on. But we need to make links, argue and explain to movements and parties that are worried about it being a throwback.”

Excerpted from debatesocialistadigital.com

Translated by Owen Richards 

For more information on Chavez' 2009 call for a new International, read: 

http://directaction.org.au 

http://links.org.au

Socialism and voluntary labour

The following is an article from the Socialist Debate website about the role of voluntary labour in Venezuela's housing construction program, Mision Vivienda, launched in April this year to address the shortage of housing in Venezuela. It discusses the significance of voluntary labour in the transition to socialism.

Welcome socialism

By Neftali Reyes, Debate socialista 

Translated by Owen Richards 

Practice has had the last word: this process is headed for socialism. The facts have already appeared on the social horizon. Reality has outstripped the Byzantine discussions of the philosophical pretenders who deny our socialism. They have their refutation from within the bowels of life itself.

An historic event has occurred in Venezuela: the oil workers were summoned to Voluntary Collective Labour in Mision Vivienda and arrived en masse. And the number exceeded fifteen thousand.

Voluntary Labour, where the worker goes off to work motivated by altruism, and committed to the society to which they belong and in which they feel wanted, is giving labour a new meaning: it is liberating it, experimenting with it, and prefiguring free labour. It is now done without the compulsion of survival.

Voluntary Labour is the “sharp tool” that must be used to build Socialism. It radiates to all of society the new ethics of the loving relations, and through it the working class leads the revolutionary process.

The massive surge of oil workers to Voluntary Labour means that the conditions for the flourishing of socialism exist in Venezuela.  It’s indicative of the class struggle that socialism unleashes on the old world, against capitalism, a system that hangs on in a thousand ways. It unequivocally indicates that the Socialist battle takes place here in our midst, even though we sometimes misunderstand it.

Without a doubt, the Bolivarian Revolution has created conditions to build socialism as never before in our history. Socialism can arise in Venezuela because it expands and reinforces the state-administered Social Property. This form of property enables the fruits of labour to be the property of society as a whole, constituting itself thus as the basis of the Consciousness of Social Duty.

The workers become more and more aware of their power and their historical role, a role that goes beyond merely making demands; they’re committed to showing the way to the new world. This is the material basis for the advance of the process.

Furthermore, the government, political power, is in the hands of the Revolution, embodied in president Chavez. The call to socialism, to anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism that came down from the high command, unleashed the contradictions that generate movement and make the way toward socialism possible.

After years of struggle, favorable factors converge: Social Property administered by the state; a working class that is conscious of it historical role; Popular Power lead by Chavez – the most important Venezuelan revolutionary of the last hundred years in loving harmony with the masses; the Housing Mission as the auspicious setting for demonstrating the power of voluntary labour.

Centuries of hope, hope in the possibility of greatness, hope that we can defeat the deadening mediocrity, finds its concretion here. We are privileged: socialism is almost within our reach.

There’s no excuse to get lost in shortcuts or to use blunt instruments. We must have faith, break with custom, and follow the example set by the oil workers.

This is Socialism. Now we must pass beyond adversities, deepening socialism, nurturing it and extending it.

The country needed its best sons, and more than fifteen thousand patriots from within the heart of the oil industry stepped forward. The march to Socialism, which is the attempt to build a viable society, needed real action to demonstrate that humanity is able to surpass egoistic behaviour and to wholeheartedly build that other world that the Liberator dreamed of. The oil workers stepped forward and said, “present”.

Now they are the example and the promise, showing the way, they are the evidence that Socialism is more than a utopia; it’s a reality that’s taking shape before our very eyes.

They were called to Voluntary Collective Labour, invited to give of themselves to the Mision Vivienda, they gave themselves to society, to its Revolutionary Government, generously offering their most valuable possession: their labour power. And they came, without asking for explanations, and without hesitating, more than fifteen thousand good souls with a will to commit themselves to the future.

This act, which not by chance passes almost unnoticed, is one of the most important things that have taken place in the Bolivarian Revolution, placing it in a new dimension on the path.

Labour, always appropriated by the ruling classes, acquires with the gesture of these oil workers the condition of being an instrument of liberation, it’s the harbinger of a new world where exploitation - which is nothing but the appropriation of social labour on behalf of a minority - is overcome through the establishment of loving relations for the benefit of all.

What took place in Mision Vivienda with the Voluntary Collective Labour foreshadows the emancipation of labour, when labour will belong to society, to everyone.

The material and social foundations upon which to build a society where “to each according to his ability, to each according to his need” are established. In that world, exploitation, the appropriation of labour, robbery, will no longer be possible. It will no longer make sense. That is True Socialism.

Beyond the will of its protagonists, Mision Vivienda exposes the Revolution’s basic contradiction: the confrontation between capitalism and Socialism.

The capitalists, the anti-social, put a high price on their “collaboration”, they expect payment in cash, and, most harmfully, they do so with an egoistic consciousness.

Voluntary Labour is a socialist tool. It approaches the problem of housing with moral and spiritual vigour. By the end, we will have housing, but more importantly, we will have a conscious mass, a mass able to understand and confront the challenges along the road to Socialism. They will be a symbol of that which we struggle for.  And an active, conscious vanguard will have formed, that has proved its effectiveness, its loyalty to Comandante Chavez, willing to step forward when called upon.

The challenge of the oil workers is great: now they have the responsibility to show the way, to guide the rest of society in the building of Socialism.

Let the gesture that these pioneers made be known throughout the country and around the world. Let their selflessness and their understanding of the historic moment be known.

The spirit of our nation’s heroes, of the Paso de Los Andes, of Carabobo, is embodied in this gesture of the workers. They are a prelude, a good omen of the successes we will have in the coming battles.

May society reward them, returning love for the love that they gave to all of humanity.

[For more information on Mision Vivienda, see: Venezuelanalysis.com]

Chavez's return: what is to be done?

From the thrill of the return

This Grain is written with emotion, which is the first element of the new picture. It is from passion that the great works of the people are built. That love, that passion for Bolivar, was the hurricane that made Independence possible. That human warmth that alone awakens great deeds and the men that embody them has appeared again with the return of Chavez.

Chavez’s return changes the political landscape that the right tried to establish: the plans for restoration have been frustrated; por ahora. The revolution and Chavez’s leadership deepens its roots in the passion of the humble, this is very important, and creates magnificent conditions for the much needed great leap towards complete consolidation.

Amidst the euphoria arises a question that the triumph [of Chavez’s return] cannot gloss over: What is to be done?

We must not fall into triumphalism. In the midst of the euphoria, the side that reflects most, the camp that plans for the future, will ultimately be victorious. We must not forget that the empire’s greed never sleeps.

We must refine theory – this is essential and fundamental. We must never forget that a Revolution cannot stray far from theory, from the ideology that sustains it. Theory, ideology, is the source of every victory and defeat.

Ideological distractions have done such damage to the revolutionary march and have already shown their impotence. With them it’s not possible to shape society, to give sentiment strategic consistency.

It is necessary to consolidate a social and political organization that underpins the building of socialism, an organization that forms a national fabric starting from the finest capillaries and going all the way up to the government and its leader.

Thus, we enter into a stage of reorganization in all fields. We are happy, and there are reasons for our happiness. Chavez has demonstrated great fortitude and deep reflections in his “fruitful repose”.