Defencism and support for Venezuela's communal councils and communes

[Die Neue Zeit]

Venezuela's Communes: Not as Radical as You Might Think by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

The use of such institutions is common throughout Latin America, and they are employed by countries with both leftist and rightist political systems. Though many communist regimes have made use of communes, those envisaged by Venezuela have nothing to do with the communes that were employed in communist countries. Rather, they look almost identical to the projects used throughout Latin America.

Ultimately, the debate over Venezuela's communes demonstrates perfectly the opposition's central flaw. They are not debating the issues relevant to the life of ordinary Venezuelans, or analyzing the merits of Chávez's proposal. Instead, they paint all his proposals and ideas as a plot to turn Venezuela into the next Cuba. Regardless of how one feels about Chávez, this is a regrettable practice that undermines Venezuelan democratic institutions and deprives the Venezuelan people of a meaningful debate about the issues facing them today.

Venezuela's politics: Commune-ism by The Economist

After taking over the courts and provoking an opposition boycott of legislative elections, he is now targeting state and municipal governments, currently the last bulwark against his rule among elected officials. By forcing them to compete for resources with pliable “communes”, he may starve them to death [...] in practice, the state will provide most of their resources, determine which communes can register, and impose “development” laws and decrees.

A Libyan specter over Caracas by Haaretz

The most recent “innovations” in his race to achieve total control are the creation of the “communal system” and the armed militias.

The communes, neighborhood coalitions of social organizations whose leaders are elected from a group of persons appointed by Chavez, are the equivalent of the popular congresses in Gadhafi’s Libya. They would in turn elect the president, in place of the general population‏) In giving them power, Chavez is nullifying the authority of both mayors and governors and the National Assembly. According to the new law, each commune will receive state resources, and will have its own parliament and a charter that will presumably ensure the primacy of the collective interest over individual rights. In reality, this will allow the supreme leader to decide the country’s economic, international and domestic policy. Such a pyramidal system may be appropriate for a tribal society like Libya’s, but it does not sit well with Venezuelans, who cherish their individual freedoms and feel that the collectivist idea goes against them.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/venezuela-...html?p=2115249

The Chavez government takes basically a clientelist approach...which is typical of Latin American populism. that is, they use subsidies and benefits distributed to select groups as a way of buying loyalty and building up masses who can be called out in demos or mobilizations to support the lider maximo [...] Latin American populism has traditionally originated from the middle classes, and often from the officers in the military.

Common to most criticisms of Venezuela's system of communal councils and communes is an implicit defense and support for bourgeois federalism. Even if the assertions by the right-wing opposition are correct, bourgeois federalism and fetishes for such are no appropriate means for the workers to pursue any semblance of independent politics.

[Nolan]

I think what has screwed the opposition over is their tactic of screaming "dictatorship!!11" whenever Chavez does anything. They've suckered a lot of people that way, don't get me mistaken, but it ultimately gets old when you have the major tv stations whining about dictatorship for ten years straight - without any censorship.

[RadioRaheem84]

While I agree that this is a problem for the independent Venezuelan worker, the language employed by the Harretz article seems very right-libertarian. The councils are a good thing but need way more political independence from the State. They're not collectivist organizations doing the bidding of an increasingly authoritarian State.

[Jose Gracchus]

Does anyone have any evidence to back up their assertions about what's going on in Caracas, or is all this talk about what the 'communes' are up to just pissing in the wind?

The idea that any criticism, including by syndicat or others criticizing the class content of such organizations, is an "implicit defense of bourgeois federalism" is an idiotic claim, unsupported by any argument. You're simply trying to squeeze the "with us or against us" fruit for your own benefit.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I said "common to most criticisms." I didn't have in mind your specific skepticism.

Criticisms based solely on ambiguity re. independent working-class organization are valid. All other criticisms are fellow-travelling bourgeois federalism.

[syndicat]

Common to most criticisms of Venezuela's system of communal councils and communes is an implicit defense and support for bourgeois federalism. Even if the assertions by the right-wing opposition are correct, bourgeois federalism and fetishes for such are no appropriate means for the workers to pursue any semblance of independent politics.

hey asshole, why is this comment following a quote from me? I wasn't talking about "bourgeois federalism". and what does this phrase even mean? do you mean any advocacy of federalism is "bourgeois"? You'd need an argument to defend such a claim. otherwise it's just an insult.

you haven't posted anything relevant to, or in response to what you quote from me:

The Chavez government takes basically a clientelist approach...which is typical of Latin American populism. that is, they use subsidies and benefits distributed to select groups as a way of buying loyalty and building up masses who can be called out in demos or mobilizations to support the lider maximo [...] Latin American populism has traditionally originated from the middle classes, and often from the officers in the military.

your views generally favor the bureaucratic class so i can understand why'd you be interested in defending them.

[Jose Gracchus]

With them or against them. See we think Chavez is pulling the wool over the eyes, but that must mean we side with the provincial governors and city mayors over the workers.

Its just an attempt to set up a prerogative state dependent purely on Chavez and his clique, it is not a genuine system of bottom-up workers' power, based on the direct control of base assemblies of workers.

[syndicat]

The American ambassador to Venezuela advises people: "Look at what Chavez does, not at what he says." An example is in regard to the oil industry. This industry was nationalized under the previous form of populism in Venezuela, the Accion Democratica, in 1976. What Chavez has done is a partial re-privatization of the energy industry. He has touted various "mixed enterprises" -- private and public ownership. This means that Chevron and other big oil companies can now make profits from partial ownership of energy industry firms in Venezuela. The new Chavez constitution in 1999 explicitly allows "mixed enterprises."

Meanwhile, the Chavez regime takes a very negative and at times hostile stance toward public sector unions. At PDVSA, the state oil company, the workers have petitioned five times for new elections of delegates and each time the Chavez regime has turned them down. thre current head of the union is a Chavista and a bit out of touch with the rank and file.

In the case of the Metro, Chavez broke their last contract by threatening to militarize the trains if they didn't back down. There have been demonstrations of health care workers in the public hospital system demanding the right to collectively bargain....for years now they've been working without a contract.

Meanwhile, the Chavez government uses coops as a way to contract out work and create a more precarious workforce. for example garbage collectors in Caracas used to be government employees with various union rights. Then they were forced into a private coop. Now they've lost a lot of their former rights.

These are not signs of a governing group committed to working class empowerment.

In regard to the community councils, in one study it says that the corruption and incompetence of these councils has meant very little progress in housing construction projects. These projects are often not completed or are characterized by shoddy work. Meanwhile, the community councils are expected to play a police role, through their relationship to the Community Police, and their surveillance of their communities which is tied in to DISIP (the political police).

The problem is that a revolution needs autonomous mass social movements so that the masses can construct their liberation from below, through movements they manage. But the Chavista regime has used the level of mass discontent in Venezuela as a means to mobilize people for electoral purposes and to maintain a relationship of dependency on the party in power.

Electoral considerations affected, for example, the approach to medical care. There already existed a public health care system in Venezuela, financed via oil revenues, and created by previous Accion Democratic populist governments. But the hospital & public health system tends to have many personnel who were loyal to the old Accion Democratica party. so Chavez has underfunded and undermined this public hospital system, and has created a separate, competing health are program, the health care "mission", which creates local clinics. But there is a lack of coordination.

Meanwhile working conditions at the hospitals have continued to deteriorate and Chavez refuses to negotiate with the workers' union.

the rightwing opposition are a convenient bogeyman. they have no answers and lost their popular legitimacy ever since the caracazo riots and massacres in 1989. what's needed is an authentic autonomous mass social left alternative.

[Jose Gracchus]

Do you have sources for these claims, especially regarding the community councils? I'd greatly appreciate them.

[Die Neue Zeit]

hey asshole, why is this comment following a quote from me? I wasn't talking about "bourgeois federalism". and what does this phrase even mean? do you mean any advocacy of federalism is "bourgeois"? You'd need an argument to defend such a claim. otherwise it's just an insult.

With them or against them. See we think Chavez is pulling the wool over the eyes, but that must mean we side with the provincial governors and city mayors over the workers.

Its just an attempt to set up a prerogative state dependent purely on Chavez and his clique, it is not a genuine system of bottom-up workers' power, based on the direct control of base assemblies of workers.

There's a difference between a central government giving relatively equal autonomy to regions and localities on various political jurisdictions, and shitty "states rights" disputes in the constitutional courts as if they're "naturally" entitled to some jurisdiction. Autonomy is given and is taken away, and no existing constitutional court should allow recourse on such matters.

Much of the mess in nearby Bolivia right now is because of bourgeois federalism (i.e., the provincial governors and legislators, as well as the city mayors and councillors).

Meanwhile, the Chavez regime takes a very negative and at times hostile stance toward public sector unions.

[...]

Meanwhile, the Chavez government uses coops as a way to contract out work and create a more precarious workforce.

[...]

In regard to the community councils, in one study it says that the corruption and incompetence of these councils has meant very little progress in housing construction projects. These projects are often not completed or are characterized by shoddy work. Meanwhile, the community councils are expected to play a police role, through their relationship to the Community Police, and their surveillance of their communities which is tied in to DISIP (the political police).

The problem is that a revolution needs autonomous mass social movements so that the masses can construct their liberation from below, through movements they manage. But the Chavista regime has used the level of mass discontent in Venezuela as a means to mobilize people for electoral purposes and to maintain a relationship of dependency on the party in power.

My main beef re. the "Bolivarian Revolution" is with an electoral law that prohibits registered parties from having an explicit and exclusive class-based demographic content. Ostensibly this is supposed aimed against bourgeois and petit-bourgeois electoral clubs (not that they don't already have their lobbyist Chambers of Commerce or Federations of Small Businesses, respectively), but ignored are natural laws of unintended consequences. IIRC, it's illegal to establish a registered electoral "Partido" de los Trabajadores, let alone a worker-class party-movement in Venezuela a la the pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD, that doesn't make cross-class appeals (by allowing non-workers as voting members, among other things).

[syndicat]

Do you have sources for these claims, especially regarding the community councils? I'd greatly appreciate them.

There is a study of the community councils done by a woman who is an environmental activist in Venezuela. She concludes they are mainly clientelist entitites. There is a PDF available online of her study. It's cited in the footnotes in "Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle", a book i'm in the process of writing a review of for publication. The author of this book cites a variety of additional sources and facts in regard to the community councils also. The problems of the community councils in regard to housing, for example, are from yet another study the author cites.