Venezuela’s Experiments in Participatory Democracy and a People-Planet-Friendly Political Economy

The Constitution of 1999 re-defines Venezuela’s political system by endorsing participatory democracy over the traditional system of representative democracy; expanding protected rights by recognizing the vital importance of economic, social and cultural rights in democratic society; returning control of the country’s national resources to the state and establishing achieving social justice as a constitutional mandate.

The 1999 Constitution seeks as much representative democracy as is needed and as much participatory democracy as is possible.

It similarly re-defines the country’s economic system by promoting a development model that puts ownership of natural resources back in the hands of the Venezuelan people, more equitably distributes the country’s oil rents, fosters cooperatives for the national production of goods, re-distributes fallow lands for public use and balances the needs of private capital with the needs of Venezuela’s people.

Internationally, Venezuela’s new constitution and direction put additional emphasis on working towards a multi-polar world, the right to sovereignty and self-determination, South-South cooperation and the political unity of South America.

Community Councils as a Basic Unit of Governance in Venezuela’s Participatory Democracy

Participatory Democracy in Venezuela

Is Venezuela becoming the centre for practising, discussing and divulging examples of participatory democracy?

Participation is a key word in the Bolivarian revolution. Not simply that it is mentioned around 90 times in the constitution, but that it is through participation that the revolution has been saved, maintained and developed. The proclaimed Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is a revolution made up of parallels . . . . The 1999 Constitution seeks as much representative democracy as is needed and as much participatory democracy as is possible.

The learning process is a basic argument for, and an important outcome of, participatory democracy. Parallel to the decision-making, a process of learning takes place where people learn how different things work and function and how they can influence them: a budget, a health station, a community kitchen. Knowledge is required to participate in building up society, and the ability to learn from each other is crucial. Through the knowledge process citizens learn to take responsibility.

Perhaps one of the most impressionable missions (a term for government’s social projects) underway is Mision Identidad, which is a mission involving the National Guard and groups of people organized via grassroots clusters to register all folks in Venezuela as Venezuelan citizens. This mission is particularly pertinent in the countryside, where people and families have been living for generations without citizenship, and thus, without access to government programs and benefits. The process of this mission is a beautiful one, and one very grounded in basic need, as people begin to realize their capacity as Venezuelan citizens and that there is a process of empowerment and development in which they can participate through exercising their rights as citizens.

[Thus], it is common understanding that democracy cannot exist unless everyone participates. Ultimately, this is the mission of the missions; to build a public with a solid foundation and capacity to participate in their own democracy, in the creation of their reality, and in the manifestation of their vision.

Party Politics vs. Community Politics

In an earlier era of mass politics, parties and trade unions were able to reach and represent large constituencies, they had an impact on policy making at various levels, and they were able to build national and international alliances to support workers’ struggles. But over time, many of these structures have become rigid and unresponsive to the demands of their constituencies. Given the greater informalization of the workforce; the growing importance of ethnicity, race, and gender; and the shift away from the factory to the barrio (community) as the site for organizing, political parties and trade unions have proven to be outdated and inflexible. Their hierarchy and centralism contrasts with the more democratic methods of popular assembly being employed in popular neighborhoods. No wonder then that the most innovative forms of struggle are emerging not through political parties but in such forms as community radio, community-based labor organizations, neighborhood assemblies and recuperated factories.

. . . . during the December 2006 elections, community organizations produced their own election propaganda, held assemblies, and campaigned outside of the political parties . . . . The election campaign, like the referendum, was successful largely due to the efforts of community organizations, while political parties stayed on the margins . . . . The formation of communal councils seems to counter the idea that Venezuela is moving towards greater centralization and concentration of power in the figure of Chavez. Rather, the emphasis seems to be on creating self-sustaining units of popular power that articulate with the state through a restructured party that is more in touch with the grass roots.

Communal Councils

The Communal Councils Law was passed in April 2006, but the story begins much earlier. In the 1980s, Venezuela began an extensive decentralization process, launching mayoral elections and handing over new responsibilities to local governments. After Chavez was elected president in 1998, he continued the decentralization, but changed its emphasis. He called for transferring power not to local government, but directly to popular movements.

This “popular decentralization” has led to a series of experiments in grassroots democracy. First came the Bolivarian Circles, neighborhood councils that were officially autonomous, but often linked to and supportive of the government. At Chavez’s urging, the Bolivarian Circles were mostly succeeded by Electoral Battle Units (UBEs), which mobilized the pro-Chavez vote for elections. Next, the government launched Local Public Planning Councils, in which citizens, politicians, and bureaucrats were to collaborate at the city level to address local problems.

By 2005 most of the Local Public Planning Councils had become mired in bureaucracy and dominated by politicians, paving the way for communal councils. These new councils are organized at a much more local level, usually a few blocks. They are responsible for bringing together grassroots groups, creating community development plans, implementing projects to address local needs, and monitoring government and community activities. Or, in Bolivarian legalese, they are “manifestations of participation, expression, and integration between diverse community organizations, social groups, and citizens, which allow organized society to directly manage public policy and projects that respond to the needs and aspirations of communities, and the construction of an equal and just society.”

The Communal Councils Law calls for the councils to decide their own geographic limits, but also follow a detailed set of guidelines. The law recommends that each urban council contain 200-400 families, each rural council at least 20 families, and each indigenous council at least 10 families. All decisions are to be made in citizen assemblies with a minimum of 10 percent of residents over age 15. These assemblies are to elect executive, financial management, and monitoring committees, as well as thematic committees based on local priorities (health, education, recreation, land, safety, etc.) . . . . [These] councils are being set up in the hope that their members, and the small groups they represent, will take responsibility for changing their lives. Now the community is the basic structural unit of government of the new state.

“People start by making a social sketch of their community: houses, inhabitants, their income, infrastructure, social problems.” This work contributes to the “participative diagnosis” and highlights priorities: water supplies, drainage, a health centre. On that basis the communal council suggests projects to citizens’ assemblies, passes them to relevant authorities and manages resources allocated through a communal, cooperative bank.

Perhaps most importantly, money can flow into and out of the councils. By law, they can receive funds directly from the national, state, or city governments, from their own fundraising, or from donations. In turn, the councils can award grants for community projects. If they set up a communal bank with neighboring councils, they can also make loans to cooperatives or other activities.

In practice, funding has depended more on the discretion of government leaders than the law. Councils can apply for up to $14,000 per project (enough for a modest street-paving), although this limit is not specified in the law. The councils are encouraged to submit larger proposals to their city’s participatory budgeting process or district councils, the only problem being that these do not yet exist in most cities. No matter, the funding limit was later increased to $28,000 for second-time applicants and some councils have reportedly received even more.

Despite this confusion, the communal councils have been wildly popular. Eight months after the law was passed, over 16,000 councils had already formed throughout the country 12,000 of them had received funding for community projects. That’s $1 billion total, out of a national budget of $53 billion. The councils had established nearly 300 communal banks, which have received $70 million for micro-loans. The government plans to transfer another $4 billion in 2007. Thanks to these funds, the councils have implemented thousands of community projects, such as street pavings, sports fields, medical centers, and sewage and water systems.

“The councils are not only a response to the problems of bureaucracy and corruption; they also increase the accountability of people who were used to letting the state decide for them and then complain about the result.” . . . . Councils may be more finely tuned version of the principle and help Venezuelans get the means to exercise co-responsibility with the state . . . . The population is more than ready to take on the responsibilities.

Venezuela’s communal councils are still a work in progress, but so far, the results are promising. Thousands of communities are mobilizing as never before, taking advantage of their new power to decide government spending and policies. In the process, the communal councils have raised major challenges for democratic participation: how to decide what people should participate in, how to deal with serious disagreements, how to integrate different levels of government, how many rules to have, and how to get enough people to participate.

The councils are an ongoing experiment amid broader political changes, so their reality is regularly changing faster than the laws. This does not mean that the laws or the councils are fundamentally flawed, but perhaps just that large systems of participatory democracy by nature require frequent adjustment.

A research group at Montea’vila University has proposed integrating different levels of government through “popular federalism.” Their plan calls for “a state where regional autonomy is strong and the central state weak, but coordinating,” with a focus on strengthening grassroots community groups. This approach would redefine participatory democracy as a multi-level system of participation, rather than just communal councils.

As a sign of success, the communal councils are also taking on a life of their own. Council activists and grassroots movements are demanding more say in the councils’ funding, rules, and powers. If they can transform these demands into new political structures and processes, the communal councils may indeed reinvent government by the people (of the people and for the people).

Venezuela’s Experiments in a People-Planet Friendly Political Economy

Let us rather begin from the impossibility of developing capitalism in the world. There are not enough resources to allow the almost 200 countries in the planet to reach a development comparable to that of the Group of Eight. For that we would need 20 planets, which would be destroyed in less than a century.

As I see it, 21st-Century socialism must start from this realization. It is not possible to imitate that style of development, which is founded on waste, planned obsolescence, over exploitation, consumerism and pollution. We must develop another kind, based on austerity, recycling, conservation and sustainability.

No longer are free trade and private capital the only terms of discussion; that discussion now includes poverty, social exclusion, regional integration, and sovereignty and South-South cooperation. And more than just expanding a discussion, these governments have started re-defining the role of the state in development, the role of the people in decision-making and the role of their countries in the regional and global contexts.

Our model of socialism does not exclude private property. It recognizes it and even dignifies it, placing it on a pedestal, of what? Of caring, or of recognition of society, making you a respected proprietor, who doesn’t trample others and who can coexist and accepts to coexist with a State, with a constitution, with laws, and with collective communitarian ownership by producer’s associations, with collective ownership and social ownership. That is to say, a mixed system that tries to seek a social balance, economic balance and a political balance, and even beyond that, territorial balance, the harmonic development of the land . . .

Another of Chavez’s top priorities since first taking office in 1999 has been land reform. The country has long been run by rich oligarchs including large land-owning ones that allowed 5% of the largest landowners to control 75% of the land and 75% of the smallest ones to have only 6% of it. Chavez is trying to implement land reform legislation allowing underused land owned by the latifundistas (the large rich landowners) to be redistributed to landless campesinos who’ll put it to productive use and improve their lives in the process.

Now, I (Chavez) have said that it aims to modestly contribute to the quest for international equilibrium in order to escape this crazy, uni-polar world, where someone wants to be the leader of the world, to a world in balance, where there is freedom, respect of sovereignty, and therefore world peace . . . . In the end I believe that dialogue, but frank, sincere, open dialogue with no hidden cards, is what is lacking in this country and in the world . . . . We are also committed to promoting a hemisphere where relations among nations are based on mutual respect, cooperation, solidarity and integration.

. . . . these goals have clashed with Washington’s insistence on free trade as the only means to development, representative and elite-based democracy as the only viable political organization of society and the use of preventive war and transformational diplomacy as its main diplomatic tools . . . . Venezuela’s new direction is not a threat to the interests of the U.S., but it is a challenge to its hegemonic vision of the world and the hemisphere.

The stitching of the fabric of the revolution is unmatched in its strength and breadth of anything I have ever seen. Throughout the country, not just in the urban barrios, social programs called ‘misiones’- a social development strategy borrowed from the Cuban revolution- are being implemented by the people with the support of government resources . . . . These campaigns include education – from literacy to the university level, health, employment, citizenship, support for indigenous groups and their reincorporation into society, economic justice and resistance to neoliberalism through development of grassroots and community cooperatives and businesses, to name a few . . . . Each mission is equally impressive in terms of the strength and spirit of the participants and their eagerness to continue in their education and in their efforts to further social change in their homes and communities.

The need is both to empower working people, which he sees possible both through co-management and the new grassroots communal councils, and simultaneously create “new values” that mean that working people use this power not in their narrow self-interest but according to the needs of society as a whole. He argues, “Without democratic, participatory and protagonistic production, people remain the fragmented, crippled human beings that capitalism produces”. However, simply giving people the power without seeking to transform their consciousness will not lead to a better society, as he uses recent examples in Venezuela to demonstrate.

He argues the Bolivarian revolution “has reminded us that socialism is not the goal. Rather, the goal is the full development of human potential. Socialism is the path to that goal.” . . . . The struggle for human development . . . . the understanding that people are transformed as they struggle for justice and dignity . . . . . that socialism and protagonistic democracy are one – these are the characteristics of a new humanist socialism, a socialism for the twenty-first century everywhere.”

[tags]democracy, participatory democracy, direct democracy, policentricity, institutional diversity, self-governance, self-reliance, co-intelligence, politics, ecosocial crisis, community, citizen deliberative council, community council, dialogue, cooperation, land reform, commons, diversity, government, peace, one world, poverty, work, self-organization, venezuela[/tags]

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(The above article is a summary and re-arrangement of the following articles)

~From Venezuela’s promising future by Renaud Lambert (2006/09/13)

Local councils — Units of Popular Power — are being set up in the hope that their members, and the small groups they represent, will take responsibility for changing their lives . . . . Now the community is the basic structural unit of government of the new state, legally defined as 200-400 families in urban areas, around 20 in the countryside and from 10 up for the indigenous population . . . . “People start by making a social sketch of their community: houses, inhabitants, their income, infrastructure, social problems.” This work contributes to the “participative diagnosis” and highlights priorities: water supplies, drainage, a health centre. On that basis the communal council suggests projects to citizens?f assemblies, passes them to relevant authorities and manages resources allocated through a communal, cooperative bank. Each project can get up to $15,300; applications for more expensive projects can be made to public planning councils or town halls for the following year.

In Barinas, Me’rida, Ta’chira and Trujillo, the four most advanced states of the Occidente region, more than $44.6m has already been paid for some 3,000 projects. After 2007 half the money allocated to the Intergovernmental Decentralisation Fund and the Special Economic Assignments Law for mines and hydrocarbons, nearly $1.2bn, will be earmarked to finance the councils. Town halls and states that used to benefit from these funds will have to make do with what is left over.

“The councils are not only a response to the problems of bureaucracy and corruption; they also increase the accountability of people who were used to letting the state decide for them and then complain about the result.” . . . . Councils may be more finely tuned version of the principle and help Venezuelans get the means to exercise co-responsibility with the state . . . . The population is more than ready to take on the responsibilities.

As is so often true, the local women had taken matters in hand. The stakes were considerable and the law clear. Notices said: “If less than 20% of the community takes part (6) the election will be invalid and no complaints will be accepted afterwards. The women were confident: “The men will come,” one said. “I’ve told my husband: no vote, then no meals, no laundry, nothing!”

In a few months thousands of councils have been or are being set up. Those that existed before the law was passed are gradually being legalised. There are already more than 500 in Caracas and 50,000 are expected overall. Upper-class districts are also taking part ?\ “that is, when people agree to provide information on salaries”, said a resident of Prado del Este.

The rush to set up the councils shows that they cater to a need for democratic process. Participation had already been encouraged in the workplace, as co-management, self-management or cooperatives (the number of these shot up from under 1,000 in 1999 to more than 100,000). There were local cultural committees. But political arrangements were still needed.

Cha’vez himself has said: “Our internal enemies, the most dangerous enemies of the revolution, are bureaucracy and corruption” . . . . With Venezuela’s social divisions, skilled civil servants often come from backgrounds resistant to social change, sometimes because of ignorance of the conditions in which most Venezuelans live. Gilberto Gimenez, director of the foreign minister’s private office, has said his solution was: “Diplomats will be promoted only if they spend two weeks in the barrios (working class districts).” He was smiling when he said it.

 

Communal Councils in Venezuela: Can 200 Families Revolutionize Democracy? at VenezuelAnalysis Tuesday, Mar 06, 2007

Participatory democracy is difficult to achieve anywhere, but especially at the national scale. So far, the experience has been mixed. The councils are helping communities address common interests, funneling more money to basic community needs, and bringing people together in thousands of neighborhoods . . . . In the turbulent political climate of Venezuela, will the communal councils survive?

The Communal Councils Law was passed in April 2006, but the story begins much earlier. In the 1980s, Venezuela began an extensive decentralization process, launching mayoral elections and handing over new responsibilities to local governments. After Chavez was elected president in 1998, he continued the decentralization, but changed its emphasis. He called for transferring power not to local government, but directly to popular movements.

This “popular decentralization” has led to a series of experiments in grassroots democracy. First came the Bolivarian Circles, neighborhood councils that were officially autonomous, but often linked to and supportive of the government. At Chavez’s urging, the Bolivarian Circles were mostly succeeded by Electoral Battle Units (UBEs), which mobilized the pro-Chavez vote for elections. Next, the government launched Local Public Planning Councils, in which citizens, politicians, and bureaucrats were to collaborate at the city level to address local problems.

By 2005 most of the Local Public Planning Councils had become mired in bureaucracy and dominated by politicians, paving the way for communal councils. These new councils are organized at a much more local level, usually a few blocks. They are responsible for bringing together grassroots groups, creating community development plans, implementing projects to address local needs, and monitoring government and community activities. Or, in Bolivarian legalese, they are “manifestations of participation, expression, and integration between diverse community organizations, social groups, and citizens, which allow organized society to directly manage public policy and projects that respond to the needs and aspirations of communities, and the construction of an equal and just society.”

The Communal Councils Law calls for the councils to decide their own geographic limits, but also follow a detailed set of guidelines. The law recommends that each urban council contain 200-400 families, each rural council at least 20 families, and each indigenous council at least 10 families. All decisions are to be made in citizen assemblies with a minimum of 10 percent of residents over age 15. These assemblies are to elect executive, financial management, and monitoring committees, as well as thematic committees based on local priorities (health, education, recreation, land, safety, etc.).

Perhaps most importantly, money can flow into and out of the councils. By law, they can receive funds directly from the national, state, or city governments, from their own fundraising, or from donations. In turn, the councils can award grants for community projects. If they set up a communal bank with neighboring councils, they can also make loans to cooperatives or other activities.

In practice, funding has depended more on the discretion of government leaders than the law. Councils can apply for up to $14,000 per project (enough for a modest street-paving), although this limit is not specified in the law. The councils are encouraged to submit larger proposals to their city’s participatory budgeting process or district councils, the only problem being that these do not yet exist in most cities. No matter, the funding limit was later increased to $28,000 for second-time applicants and some councils have reportedly received even more.

Despite this confusion, the communal councils have been wildly popular. Eight months after the law was passed, over 16,000 councils had already formed throughout the country?\12,000 of them had received funding for community projects. That’s $1 billion total, out of a national budget of $53 billion. The councils had established nearly 300 communal banks, which have received $70 million for micro-loans. The government plans to transfer another $4 billion in 2007. Thanks to these funds, the councils have implemented thousands of community projects, such as street pavings, sports fields, medical centers, and sewage and water systems.

Government officials agree that the communal councils are the foundation for a new system of participatory democracy, but they disagree on what this means. The former vice-minister of Popular Participation, Jose’ Antonio Mota, suggests that the councils form the base of a political pyramid, like earlier visions of council communism. “Proposals should filter up from the communal council to the district council to the municipality to the state to the nation.” Other leaders, such as Carlos Escarra’, have proposed that the councils replace city and state governments entirely, or work parallel to them. This debate is only one of many controversies.

“The communal councils should say we need stairs, not develop a project to build stairs.” . . . . Classic theories of participatory democracy suggest that participation should focus on making political decisions, be they small or large. When people implement government decisions, for example by building public works, this work is typically paid. For complex issues, the line between decision and implementation may be fuzzy. For basic infrastructure projects, on the other hand, manual labor is clearly implementation.

Hands-on volunteer work may be a valuable part of popular participation, if it motivates people to participate, generates a sense of pride and autonomy, and results in concrete improvements. In Venezuela, however, the government is rolling in money and most of the communal council volunteers are living in poverty. If the state would ordinarily pay contractors to build public works, should communal councils not be compensated equally for the same labor?

The councilor explains that the city needs the new building to meet its growing housing demand, but the women remain adamantly opposed. When the councilor refuses to budge, one of the women charges that, “This is what people in the neighborhood want, and as the law says, you have to respect that.” Thanks to the Communal Councils Law, these women have a more legitimate argument. As a result, they can claim to speak for the democratic will of the community, by law.

Communal councils cannot avoid middle levels of government, however. If a council builds a road or water pipes, they need to connect to the citywide system. City and state governments provide publicity and technical assistance for the councils and council projects often influence city issues. One council, for example, proposed a municipal referendum to impeach the mayor. Meanwhile, funding for communal councils comes at the direct expense of funding for cities.

A research group at Montea’vila University has proposed integrating different levels of government through “popular federalism.” Their plan calls for “a state where regional autonomy is strong and the central state weak, but coordinating,” with a focus on strengthening grassroots community groups. This approach would redefine participatory democracy as a multi-level system of participation, rather than just communal councils.

The councils are an ongoing experiment amid broader political changes, so their reality is regularly changing faster than the laws. This does not mean that the laws or the councils are fundamentally flawed, but perhaps just that large systems of participatory democracy by nature require frequent adjustment.

That said, the clearer and more refined the rules, the fairer and more stable the councils. A few steps are being taken in this direction. The government is debating ways to make the existing rules clearer and formalize informal rules. If the rules are to keep pace with the changing reality, however, there will need to be a more regular way to revise them. Critics have suggested that the councils themselves play a greater role in writing and changing the rules, since they know the problems on the ground better than anyone.

A national system of participatory democracy requires more participation from more people than any social movement or other form of civic engagement. Venezuelans are indeed participating in massive numbers. Thousands of communities, however, have yet to show much interest in organizing a communal council.

The low rate of participation in many neighborhoods poses a challenge of turnout: how to get enough people to participate. What kinds of people are not participating? Why are they not participating? What motivated participants to get involved? When is popular participation not “too many evenings?”

These questions raise a deeper question: how much participation is enough? The answer depends on the situation, but at the least turnout should be high enough that participants represent the diverse characteristics and interests of the population. If certain types of people are not equally or adequately represented, turnout is insufficient.

The Venezuelan government and communal councils have demonstrated several ways to encourage (and in some cases discourage) participation. First, Caracas has delegated significant power directly to the communal councils. The allure of self-government attracts many people. The government has also provided direct positive incentives for participation. The most obvious is money. Many people get involved because they can get funds for neighborhood improvements, but only if they form a council. Since the councils are so small, any one person can have a substantial effect on which projects are developed. Obviously the government can only give out money if it has it and in this respect Venezuela is more privileged than other countries.

Another incentive is what one anti-Chavez bureaucrat mockingly calls “pinata parties”spectacular public events in which the government hands out money. In Venezuela, these are the Gabinetes Moviles where Chavez and other officials award funds for council projects. These high profile events attract media attention and generate public interest. They also fuel some disillusionment, since skeptics associate them with clientelism and narrow self-interest.

Often, the councils attract people by making their events fun. Some of the more prolific councils mix music, food, and entertainment into their assemblies. These virtual block parties transform one of the costs of participation (tedious meetings) into a benefit (a good time). Other councils have more formal events dominated by long speeches.

Finally, the government is trying to reduce the obstacles to participation. Because the councils are so local, the transportation and time costs of participation are less. Another approach is even more ambitious?\freeing people’s time by making participation part of their jobs. As Vice Minister Mota explained, “We need to arrange that employers will let employees off from work for a couple hours a week if they participate in a communal council. This could be coordinated by the state, like a form of community service.” Such a program could especially boost the participation of working professionals such as Mota who admits that he has not even had time to get involved in his own communal council.

What Next?

Venezuela’s communal councils are still a work in progress, but so far, the results are promising. Thousands of communities are mobilizing as never before, taking advantage of their new power to decide government spending and policies. In the process, the communal councils have raised major challenges for democratic participation: how to decide what people should participate in, how to deal with serious disagreements, how to integrate different levels of government, how many rules to have, and how to get enough people to participate.

As a sign of success, the communal councils are also taking on a life of their own. Council activists and grassroots movements are demanding more say in the councils’ funding, rules, and powers. If they can transform these demands into new political structures and processes, the communal councils may indeed reinvent government by the people (of the people and for the people).

 

Interview with the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias at VenezuelAnalysis Tuesday, Mar 13, 2007

Our model of socialism does not exclude private property. It recognizes it and even dignifies it, placing it on a pedestal, of what? Of caring, or of recognition of society, making you a respected proprietor, who doesn’t trample others and who can coexist and accepts to coexist with a State, with a constitution, with laws, and with collective communitarian ownership by producer?fs associations, with collective ownership and social ownership. That is to say, a mixed system that tries to seek a social balance, economic balance and a political balance, and even beyond that, territorial balance, the harmonic development of the land . . .

Now, I have said that it aims to modestly contribute to the quest for international equilibrium in order to escape this crazy, uni-polar world, where someone wants to be the leader of the world, to a world in balance, where there is freedom, respect of sovereignty, and therefore world peace . . . . In the end I believe that dialogue, but frank, sincere, open dialogue with no hidden cards, is what is lacking in this country and in the world.

It’s an existential obligation and I have worked hard to transform the model of petroleum dependency. I mean, it cannot be that the day I leave here the Venezuelan economic model continues to be exclusively dependent on oil production, almost exclusively on oil production.

I read so many books that arrive, old books, new books, looking for knowledge. Trying to fulfill the journey as long as God wants.

 

~From “Participatory Democracy In Venezuela” at VenezuelAnalysis Friday, Dec 09, 2005

Is Venezuela becoming the centre for practising, discussing and divulging examples of participatory democracy?

Participation is a key word in the Bolivarian revolution. Not simply that it is mentioned around 90 times in the constitution, but that it is through participation that the revolution has been saved, maintained and developed. The proclaimed Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is a revolution made up of parallels.

The learning process is a basic argument for, and an important outcome of, participatory democracy. Parallel to the decision-making, a process of learning takes place where people learn how different things work and function and how they can influence them: a budget, a health station, a community kitchen. Knowledge is required to participate in building up society, and the ability to learn from each other is crucial. Through the knowledge process citizens learn to take responsibility.

When governors, mayors, ministers, officials, bureaucrats, members of parliaments are too slow the president’s short cut around that thick middle layer has been parallelism. An important part of what is actually being won in the process is created through parallels . . . . President Chavez is creating a parallel bank, health and education programs, and a parallel to CNN – Telesur. The left-wing theory of creating parallel powers to break down and end the old order is taken to new breathtaking heights. The parallels are working – illiteracy has been exterminated and people are indeed gaining more and more power.

 

~From “Venezuela’s Global Agenda: Six More Years” at VenezuelAnalysis Thursday, Apr 05, 2007

And so today we find a number of progressive governments in Latin America leading their countries down a new path. No longer are free trade and private capital the only terms of discussion; that discussion now includes poverty, social exclusion, regional integration, and sovereignty and South-South cooperation. And more than just expanding a discussion, these governments have started re-defining the role of the state in development, the role of the people in decision-making and the role of their countries in the regional and global contexts.

The Constitution of 1999 re-defines Venezuela’s political system by endorsing participatory democracy over the traditional system of representative democracy; expanding protected rights by recognizing the vital importance of economic, social and cultural rights in democratic society; returning control of the country’s national resources to the state and establishing achieving social justice as a constitutional mandate. The 1999 Constitution seeks as much representative democracy as is needed and as much participatory democracy as is possible. It similarly re-defines the country’s economic system by promoting a development model that puts ownership of natural resources back in the hands of the Venezuelan people, more equitably distributes the country’s oil rents, fosters cooperatives for the national production of goods, re-distributes fallow lands for public use and balances the needs of private capital with the needs of Venezuela’s people. Internationally, Venezuela’s new constitution and direction put additional emphasis on working towards a multi-polar world, the right to sovereignty and self-determination, South-South cooperation and the political unity of South America.

In practice, Venezuela’s new vision for democracy and development has yielded a number of positive results. In terms of the country’s political arrangement, citizens are more engaged than ever before, participating at various levels of government and exercising more control over their own affairs. In a historic change, Venezuelans can now employ the referendum to cut short the terms of elected officials or vote down laws.

The economy has continued to grow — 9.6 percent in 2006, one of the highest rates in the world — and diversify, and 59 percent of Venezuelans ranked their economy as better than 12 months ago. The number of economic cooperatives has grown from 800 in 1998 to 181,000 in 2006, and more than 2 million hectares of land have been distributed to 10,000 families. Social programs have put 20,000 doctors in Venezuela’s poorest neighborhoods thanks to the invaluable help from the people and government of the Republic of Cuba. Moreover, social programs have offered access to free education, subsidized foods and job training, while poverty has fallen from 40 percent in 2005 to 30 percent in 2006, according to the World Bank. Put together, polling firm Consultores found that 68 percent of Venezuelans feel positive about the state of the country.

Generally speaking, the administration of President George W. Bush has looked upon Venezuela’s new direction with disdain, skepticism and concern. Why? Because these goals have clashed with Washington’s insistence on free trade as the only means to development, representative and elite-based democracy as the only viable political organization of society and the use of preventive war and transformational diplomacy as its main diplomatic tools . . . . Venezuela’s new direction is not a threat to the interests of the U.S., but it is a challenge to its hegemonic vision of the world and the hemisphere.

We, in Venezuela, are committed to the promotion of social justice and to addressing the historical frustration that have afflicted so many of our people that were historically excluded from the development processes. We are also committed to promoting a hemisphere where relations among nations are based on mutual respect, cooperation, solidarity and integration.

 

~From Democracy and Venezuela By Katherine Lahey (Katherine Lahey is a student at the University of California. She is spending six months in Venezuela studying the revolutionary process, this article is based on her first 6 weeks there on 2004)

I had sought and found information in the alternative press that exposed a more accurate setting of the threads of Venezuelan society; one of hope, redistribution of wealth, and ‘participatory democracy’, which at the time remained a vague idea in my head.

But it was not until I arrived here and began to interact with the people that I began to understand and develop my own ideas about what democracy is, what democracy looks like, and more, what democracy means to the Venezuelan people.

The stitching of the fabric of the revolution is unmatched in its strength and breadth of anything I have ever seen. Throughout the country, not just in the urban barrios, social programs called ‘misiones’- a social development strategy borrowed from the Cuban revolution- are being implemented by the people with the support of government resources . . . . These campaigns include education – from literacy to the university level, health, employment, citizenship, support for indigenous groups and their reincorporation into society, economic justice and resistance to neoliberalism through development of grassroots and community cooperatives and businesses, to name a few . . . . Each mission is equally impressive in terms of the strength and spirit of the participants and their eagerness to continue in their education and in their efforts to further social change in their homes and communities.

Barrio Adentro, the health program bridged by Cuban doctors, the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, and community organizers here who form ‘comites de salud’ (health committees) to support the efforts of the Cuban doctors working in the community . . . . These clinics practice preventative medicine, along of course with whatever immediate care is needed, and have many programs of alternative healing, relaxation, and integrative care, and in turn, help to produce a healthier community that can continue to organize and develop itself knowing that they are not alone in their efforts.

the mission called Vuelvan Caras, is a mission that prepares people for employment by training them in a particular sector that is specific to their location of residence (for example, in the city folks are trained in areas such as construction; in the countryside, in agriculture to enter cooperative work). After completing the mission, they are eligible for a job in their community, and because of their particular skill, are basically guaranteed a job.

As many people involved in the missions have pointed out, the Bolivarian Constitution says that each citizen is responsible for the building of a participatory and democratic society, but it doesn’t say how to do it. This is the incredible system the people have come up with and begun to implement in their communities.

Perhaps one of the most impressionable missions underway is Misi’on Identidad, which is a mission involving the National Guard and groups of people organized via grassroots clusters to register all folks in Venezuela as Venezuelan citizens. This mission is particularly pertinent in the countryside, where people and families have been living for generations without citizenship, and thus, without access to government programs and benefits. The process of this mission is a beautiful one, and one very grounded in basic need, as people begin to realize their capacity as Venezuelan citizens and that there is a process of empowerment and development in which they can participate through exercising their rights as citizens.

Here, it is common understanding that democracy cannot exist unless everyone participates. Ultimately, this is the mission of the missions; to build a public with a solid foundation and capacity to participate in their own democracy, in the creation of their reality, and in the manifestation of their vision.

Every perspective is given a space to express itself, because in a democratic society, no viewpoint can be censored, no matter how outside of mass public support it lies. This respect for all parties is also what gathered more support for the process itself, because people have faith that they will be represented . . . . channel 8, the state channel, airs commercials supporting the “Si’” campaign (to recall Chavez). At first I was bewildered, why on Earth would the state channel air ads soliciting its viewers to vote for the dismantling of the government then I remembered the slogan of the channel- “el canal de todos” . . . . They (Chavez’s supporters) are not against the escualidos (the opposition); on the contrary, they are for a democratic Venezuela that serves each and every citizen. And they are prepared to defend this vision against whomever or whatever stands in the way.

 

~From Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution Tells Us: “People are the Beginning and the End of Everything” at VenezuelAnalysis Monday, Feb 26, 2007

Question : Knowing by experience about the difficulty — or impossibility — of developing socialism in a country, how can we understand the rise of today’s 21st-Century socialism? What model is being built? Where is this revolution headed?

Answer : Let us rather begin from the impossibility of developing capitalism in the world. There are not enough resources to allow the almost 200 countries in the planet to reach a development comparable to that of the Group of Eight. For that we would need 20 planets, which would be destroyed in less than a century.

As I see it, 21st-Century socialism must start from this realization. It is not possible to imitate that style of development, which is founded on waste, planned obsolescence, over exploitation, consumerism and pollution. We must develop another kind, based on austerity, recycling, conservation and sustainability.

I should add that the abundance of recourses in Venezuela could soften some confrontations: the government could expropriate land by paying for it generously instead of confiscating it; it could create enterprises of social ownership that might be sources of work and consumer goods for the large majorities; it could promote agriculture and cattle-raising to achieve food security; it could intensify the educational and cultural resources to educate people in the values of socialism.

 

~From Political Parties and Social Change in Venezuela at VenezuelAnalysis Thursday, Mar 22, 2007

. . . . during the December 2006 elections, community organizations produced their own election propaganda, held assemblies, and campaigned outside of the political parties . . . . The election campaign, like the referendum, was successful largely due to the efforts of community organizations, while political parties stayed on the margins . . . . The formation of communal councils seems to counter the idea that Venezuela is moving towards greater centralization and concentration of power in the figure of Chavez. Rather, the emphasis seems to be on creating self-sustaining units of popular power that articulate with the state through a restructured party that is more in touch with the grass roots.

In an earlier era of mass politics, parties and trade unions were able to reach and represent large constituencies, they had an impact on policy making at various levels, and they were able to build national and international alliances to support workers’ struggles. But over time, many of these structures have become rigid and unresponsive to the demands of their constituencies. Given the greater informalization of the workforce; the growing importance of ethnicity, race, and gender; and the shift away from the factory to the barrio (community) as the site for organizing, political parties and trade unions have proven to be outdated and inflexible. Their hierarchy and centralism contrasts with the more democratic methods of popular assembly being employed in popular neighborhoods. No wonder then that the most innovative forms of struggle are emerging not through political parties but in such forms as community radio, community-based labor organizations, neighborhood assemblies and recuperated factories.

 

~From Book Review: Build It Now Socialism for the Twenty-first Century (2006) at VenezuelAnalysis Monday, Mar 26, 2007

Lebowitz returns to Karl Marx’s concept that the aim of socialism is to create a system that could “unleash the full development of all human potential” . . . . about the centrality of the self-activity of working people themselves as the road to emancipation . . . . the capitalist system serves only the needs of capital, not humanity. Lebowitz points to the division between the small minority that own the means of producing wealth, the capitalist class, and the rest of society, who are forced to sell their labour power to the capitalists to survive ?\ the working class ?\ as the key contradiction that needs to be resolved if we are to develop a society that puts human needs first.

Lebowitz reveals how neoliberal economics, with its near-religious belief in the power of the “free market” to solve the needs of society, “justifies” freeing capital from any restriction in order to better subjugate the rest of society to capital’s interests . . . . Therefore, while there may be a role in times of crisis for the state to stimulate the economy via investment, the provision of welfare, and ensuring decent wages, when the capitalists decide they no longer need such measures, social-democracy inevitably backs down . . . . However, Lebowitz shows how, if you realize that it is workers, not capitalists, who ultimately possess productive capacity, there is no reason to back down just because capitalists threaten to revolt.

In particular, he looks at the experiments in cooperatives and workers’ co-management as means by which working people can get control of the economy and through the process transform themselves into revolutionary subjects . . . . Lebowitz doesn’t argue that simply introducing a model involving workers’ management is enough to change society . . . . Lebowitz refers to Marx’s arguments on the need for workers to win state power to transform society, explaining that it needs to be a form of state power fundamentally different to the capitalist state, organised democratically as the self-government of working people.

The Chavez government had to chose between continuing to see capitalism as the framework to develop the Venezuelan nation, or else relying on poor majority themselves and breaking with capitalism to continue develop the goals in the constitution that promote human development. It was this that led the revolution to promote “socialism for the 21st century”.

The need is both to empower working people, which he sees possible both through co-management and the new grassroots communal councils, and simultaneously create “new values” that mean that working people use this power not in their narrow self-interest but according to the needs of society as a whole. He argues, “Without democratic, participatory and protagonistic production, people remain the fragmented, crippled human beings that capitalism produces”. However, simply giving people the power without seeking to transform their consciousness will not lead to a better society, as he uses recent examples in Venezuela to demonstrate.

He argues the Bolivarian revolution “has reminded us that socialism is not the goal. Rather, the goal is the full development of human potential. Socialism is the path to that goal.” . . . . The struggle for human development . . . . the understanding that people are transformed as they struggle for justice and dignity . . . . . that socialism and protagonistic democracy are one ?\ these are the characteristics of a new humanist socialism, a socialism for the twenty-first century everywhere.”

~From “Build it Now”: An Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz at VenezuelAnalysis Thursday, Mar 01, 2007

Another of Chavez’s top priorities since first taking office in 1999 has been land reform. The country has long been run by rich oligarchs including large land-owning ones that allowed 5% of the largest landowners to control 75% of the land and 75% of the smallest ones to have only 6% of it. Chavez is trying to implement land reform legislation allowing underused land owned by the latifundistas (the large rich landowners) to be redistributed to landless campesinos who’ll put it to productive use and improve their lives in the process.