Communal Councils
Venezuela: Eyewitness impressions of the Bolivarian revolution
October 25, 2012 – Green
Grassroots interviews from Venezuela: Developing the power of the community
Ana Marin talks about her revolutionary activity.
Solidarity statements: 'A vital victory for Chavez, Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution'
Brigadistas from the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network brigade get ready for the massive march in Caracas, October 4,Venezuela: Communes in Caracas
Concrete block production by the Ezequiel Zamora Commune, Antimano, Caracas.
September 7, 2011 -- Cuidad CSS, translated by Owen Richards for Venezuela: Translating the Revolution. Posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Among the aims of community organisation 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 local self-development.
Based on this premise, 236 communes and more than 9000 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.
What if the state of the world were measured by its majority?
What real democracy looks like: a communal council in Merida votes for its electoral commission in July 2010.
Michael Lebowitz on the socialist alternative and real human development
Prof. Michael Lebowitz on the socialist alternative from Dangerous Minds at Vimeo.
August 30, 2010 -- Michael Lebowitz is a Canadian Marxist economist. He is the director of the “Transformative practice and human development” program at the Venezuela-based left-wing think tank, the Centro Internacional Miranda. He is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University and author of Build it Now: 21st Century Socialism and the 2004 Isaac Deutscher-prize winning Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class. His latest book is The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development.
Venezuela: Communal power in Caracas
John Bellamy Foster on Venezuela: Marxism and `vernacular revolutionary traditions'
The following article is the Foreward to the July-August 2010 issue of the US socialist magazine Monthly Revi
Eric Toussaint: Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution at the crossroads?
By Eric Toussaint
[See parts 2 , 3 and 4 below.]
Building socialism from below: The role of the communes in Venezuela
Antenea Jimenez interviewed by Susan Spronk and Jeffery R. Webber
June 13, 2010 -- The Bullet -- We met with Antenea Jimenez, a former militant with the student movement who is now working with a national network of activists who are trying to build and strengthen the comunas [communes]. The comunas are community organisations promoted since 2006 by the government of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez government as a way to consolidate a new form of state based upon production at the local level. She told us about the important advances in the process, as well as the significant challenges that remain in the struggle to build a new form of popular power from below.
Can you tell us about the barrio where you live and the comuna?
I live in a barrio [neighbourhood] in the north part of Caracas and work in a national network that is building comunas. Currently we operate in seven states; the majority of the comunas are situated outside Caracas.
Venezuela: New moves to build workers' power; Revolution in the electricity industry
By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
March 22, 2010 -- The free, sovereign and independent homeland of our dreams will only come true if we radicalise the process and speed up the transition to socialism”, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez wrote in his March 14 weekly column “Chavez Lines”.
The Venezuelan government has launched a number of initiatives in recent weeks aimed to tackle threats to the revolutionary process — including from elements within the pro-Chavez camp that seek to undermine plans to deepen the revolution.
Central to this are new measures aimed at speeding up the transfer of power to organised communities.
Chavez wrote in his February 21 column: “The time has come for communities to assume the powers of state, which will lead administratively to the total transformation of the Venezuelan state and socially to the real exercise of sovereignty by society through communal powers.”
Participatory democracy
The previous day, Chavez announced the creation of the federal government council in front of thousands of armed peasants that are part of the newly created peasant battalions in the Bolivarian militia.