Re: [Marxism] The Chávez Hypothesis: Vicissitudes of a Strategic Project (Chris Gilbert)

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://roarmag.org/magazine/venezuela-communa-o-nada/

"Just as the late Hugo Chávez did not create the Bolivarian Revolution, 
the Venezuelan state did not create the communes or the communal 
councils that they comprise."


George Cicariello-Maher

---

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-communes-special-report-idUSBREA450CA20140506
Special Report: Billions unaccounted for in Venezuela's communal 
giveaway program

By Brian Ellsworth | CATIA LA MAR, VENEZUELA

The neighborhood of El Chaparral began receiving cash from the 
Venezuelan government in 2005. The windfall came courtesy of the late 
socialist leader Hugo Chavez's plan to fight poverty by transferring 
billions of dollars in oil revenue to communities around the country.


Within a year, auto mechanic Juan Freire was urging authorities to cut 
off El Chaparral and its sister community of Los Pinos, with a combined 
population of 250. The money wasn't going to the needy, he says, and it 
wasn't sowing growth. Instead, Freire alleges, leaders of the community 
council in this mountain suburb were using some of the cash for personal 
expenses and to build houses for family members. He and neighbors filed 
complaints with nearly a dozen state agencies seeking a halt to the 
transfers.


Yet the money kept rolling in: In 2008, the council received close to $1 
million - equal to about $4,000 a resident.


"When we filed complaints, the responses would always be something like, 
‘We'll send some recommendations,'" said Freire, 57. "They never gave us 
answers."


The unsupervised spending in El Chaparral is symptomatic of a vast 
community aid effort with lax financial controls. A network of more than 
70,000 community groups has received the equivalent of at least $7.9 
billion since 2006 from the federal agency that provides much of the 
financing for the program, Reuters calculates, based on official 
government reports.


The money is part of a broad government effort called the "communal 
state" that steers funds to communities, primarily through an outfit 
called the Autonomous National Fund for Community Councils, or Safonacc. 
But exactly how much money passes through this system, who gets it and 
how it's used are largely a mystery.


The communal revenue-sharing program was championed by the late Chavez. 
The charismatic former military officer wanted small neighborhood groups 
to form "communes" that would define civic life and anchor a 
citizen-driven socialist democracy. In one of his last speeches before 
dying of cancer in 2013, Chavez tasked his handpicked successor, Nicolas 
Maduro, with advancing the plan.


"I entrust this to you as I would my life," he told Maduro, a former bus 
driver who narrowly won election last year.


The most common of such organizations are the community councils, which 
number about 40,000, according to a 2013 Communes Ministry study. The 
study also identified another 30,000 such organizations, including 
networks of community councils.


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Re: [Marxism] The Chávez Hypothesis: Vicissitudes of a Strategic Project (Chris Gilbert)

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 5/20/17 9:15 AM, Nick Fredman via Marxism wrote:

Also I think it's wrong to make Syria an acid test anywhere, but it's
particularly incongruous to bring up now with regard to the Venezuelan
leadership, which for a long time has had a bad line on a number of
international issues including the genocidal treatment of the Sri Lankan
government towards the Tamil people.


I didn't say it was an acid test. In fact I unfriended probably 25 
Syrian solidarity activists on FB, including Robin Yassin-Kassab, who 
violently disagreed with my vote for Jill Stein.


That being said, the Latin American left has a poor understanding of 
Syria. But then again so does the majority of the people writing for 
Greenleft and Links. That's the way it goes.

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Re: [Marxism] The Chávez Hypothesis: Vicissitudes of a Strategic Project (Chris Gilbert)

[Nick Fredman via Marxism]

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On Sat, 20 May 2017 at 3:48 am, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote

>
> Not sure I want to reply to Gilbert but I find the notion of communes in
> Venezuela troubling. Were they supposed to be an expression of dual
> power? When the government in power has created them, it sounds much
> more like a single power. I haven't been paying close attention to
> Venezuela since Maduro took over. To some extent that has to do with
> Chavismo support for Assad that makes the notions of 21st century
> socialism sound hollow.


The best general way to understand and assess the Latin American left
governments and attempts to set up communes and workers control isn't in
terms of dual power but in terms of the Comintern's 1920s discussion of
workers governments, i.e. possible left governments within a capitalist
state and economy that could, particularly if pushed by revolutionaries,
intervene in the class struggle on the side of working people. Clearly a
situation that's only possible in particular contexts and clearly a
contradictory situation that can't last for ever one way or another, but
that's no reason to not use a possible weapon. If the Venezuelan example is
having big problems possibly due to a combination of their errors and a
very difficult objective situation, in Bolivia things seem to be going
better, in terms of the government still being an effective weapon in the
class struggle:

Bolivia: New law could allow workers to take over closed companies

Friday, May 19, 2017

The Bolivian government has proposed a bill that would allow workers to
take over the private companies they work at if they go bankrupt, and
convert them into “social companies” to stimulate production and address
unemployment, Pagina Siete reported on May 16.

The government justified the measure as part of the state's duty to protect
labour rights and generate job opportunities while improving the productive
apparatus of the country.

The Creation of Social Companies Bill was handed to the Bolivian National
Assembly for debate.

The measure applies in the cases of bankruptcy, but also liquidation or
unjustified abandonment, in accordance with the Commercial Code, but only
if the company is part of the private sector.

In that case, workers who are still active employees and willing to take it
over can present their request to a judge. They may be required to invest
in the company's social capital to keep it going.

If the company's debts exceed its available capital, then it will be paid
with the employer's personal resources, in accordance with Article 1335 of
the Civil Code.

Historically one of South America's poorest and most unstable countries,
Bolivia has enjoyed economic growth and political stability under President
Evo Morales, the country’s first Indigenous leader.

Its economy has tripled in size, while investment in social and productive
projects has doubled in the 11 years since Morales was first elected
president.

[Reprinted from TeleSUR English.]


https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/bolivia-new-law-could-allow-workers-take-over-closed-companies

Also I think it's wrong to make Syria an acid test anywhere, but it's
particularly incongruous to bring up now with regard to the Venezuelan
leadership, which for a long time has had a bad line on a number of
international issues including the genocidal treatment of the Sri Lankan
government towards the Tamil people.


- RSS 

>
>
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Re: [Marxism] The Chávez Hypothesis: Vicissitudes of a Strategic Project (Chris Gilbert)

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela
Ellner, Steve. NACLA Report on the Americas; New York49.1 (Spring 2017): 
118-120.


Building the Commune is a provocative and superbly written book with a 
well-defined thesis. Ciccariello-Maher argues that given the 
deficiencies and underperformance of established institutions in 
Venezuela-including the country's governing Partido Socialista Unido de 
Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV), the military, and 
the state's executive branch-the best hope for the political survival of 
the Chavista government and the achievement of its long-term socialist 
goals is the commune system. As the author succinctly states in the 
book's last paragraph: "The time has come to bet it all on the communes."


The communes were promoted by the government of Hugo Chávez through the 
Law of the Communes in 2010 in order to bring together adjoining 
community councils for the purpose of undertaking public works projects 
on a wider scale. The communes and community councils apply for state 
funding for projects, monitor their progress, and select their work 
lorce from members of the community. In addition, the communes are 
designed to encourage the formation of community enterprises known as 
"social production companies" (EPSs). For the Chavistas, the communes 
represent the germ of the new society they are trying to create.


The book's narrative about Venezuela's communes is rich in detail. 
Ciccariello-Maher provides a vivid account of the economic and cultural 
activities of various communes in both urban and non-urban areas. The 
economic and cultural focus is strengthened by conversations with 
Reinaldo Iturriza, who after heading the country's Communes Ministry, 
was appointed Minister of Culture in 2014. Communes described in the 
book include the El Maizal Commune in western Venezuela, whose 
agricultural output is allegedly twice the nation's average; the Ataroa 
Commune in Barquisimeto, which manages a cement block EPS and is 
committed to the "ethos of sustainability"; and the El Panal Commune in 
Caracas' famed 23 de Enero neighborhood, which runs a bakery, 
sugar-packaging plant, and supermarket.


Ciccariello-Maher writes in the tradition of bottomup historian E.P. 
Thompson, as can be deduced from the title of his previous book We 
Created Chávez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution, 
published in 2013. Ciccariello-Maher argues that the 2010 Law of the 
Communes served to "legally recognize''-and help consolidate and 
expand-the communes, but notes that the commune movement had emerged 
from the grassroots in previous years. The author presents several 
examples of this pattern of initiative and innovation from below-for 
example, the case of a group of neighbors in Caracas whose houses were 
destroyed by a landslide and who seized an abandoned building "before 
pressuring the government to expropriate it.''


Ciccariello-Maher ends the book pointing out that the mainstream press 
got it wrong when they predicted the demise of the Chavista revolution 
following the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013. Chavismo was never "a 
one-man show," he argues, and "to suggest otherwise is an insult to 
those who were building the revolution decades before Chávez, and...to 
those who continue to build revolutionary state power today."


In this way, the author departs from orthodox Marxist thinking by 
defining socialism along political rather than economic lines. For 
Ciccariello-Maher, the essence of socialism in Venezuela is "radical 
democracy." Building the Commune says little, for instance, about the 
elimination of powerful monopolistic or semi-monopolistic economic 
groups-goals prioritized by the traditional Left. In accordance with the 
concept of "dual power" originally proposed by Lenin, Ciccariello-Maher 
envisions a new state that battles an old one. The former consists of 
communes and other institutions of direct popular participation 
underpinned by social movements, while the latter takes in 
representative institutions such as municipal and state governments. 
According to the author, himself a political theorist, the goal of 
twenty-first century socialism "was to transform political power 
itself." With regard to the economy, Ciccariello-Maher asserts that 
"production is only a means, not the end. The goal is selfgovernment." 
Elsewhere, Ciccariello-Maher points out that for Chávez, what he called 
"communal culture" was the most important aspect of the commune.


An alternative view of the state put forward by Marta Harnecker and 
Greek Marxist Nicos Poulantzas is that the old state is not enemy 

Re: [Marxism] The Chávez Hypothesis: Vicissitudes of a Strategic Project (Chris Gilbert)

[Fred Murphy via Marxism]

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If you haven't read this I suggest you do so before writing (whatever your
opinion of GCM).

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2337-building-the-commune

Not sure I want to reply to Gilbert but I find the notion of communes in
> Venezuela troubling. Were they supposed to be an expression of dual power?
> When the government in power has created them, it sounds much more like a
> single power. I haven't been paying close attention to Venezuela since
> Maduro took over. To some extent that has to do with Chavismo support for
> Assad that makes the notions of 21st century socialism sound hollow. I may
> write something about the communes if I get a chance.
>
>
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Re: [Marxism] The Chávez Hypothesis: Vicissitudes of a Strategic Project (Chris Gilbert)

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 5/19/17 1:24 PM, Richard Fidler via Marxism wrote:


A truly exceptional article, with a compelling argument well grounded in recent
experience:



Not sure I want to reply to Gilbert but I find the notion of communes in 
Venezuela troubling. Were they supposed to be an expression of dual 
power? When the government in power has created them, it sounds much 
more like a single power. I haven't been paying close attention to 
Venezuela since Maduro took over. To some extent that has to do with 
Chavismo support for Assad that makes the notions of 21st century 
socialism sound hollow. I may write something about the communes if I 
get a chance.


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[Marxism] The Chávez Hypothesis: Vicissitudes of a Strategic Project (Chris Gilbert)

[Richard Fidler via Marxism]

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A truly exceptional article, with a compelling argument well grounded in recent
experience:




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