Communal Councils

While international debate focuses on President Chávez, institutions of popular democracy are taking root in Venezuela’s barrios. Pablo Navarrete introduces the importance of community councils, while Steve Ellner assesses their prospects for deepening the ‘Bolivarian revolution’.

We talked about it in the car, we talked about it with friends, we met in one member’s house and talked about it over tea, and we talked about it in moonlit darkness caused by blackouts before various meetings. Our communal council had a few concerns and many praises about the reform to the communal council law, which had just been approved in first discussion.

As the global economic crisis expands, a rapidly increasing number of people are seeking ways to combat unemployment, marginalization, corruption, repression and other problems. Such challenges have faced millions of Latin Americans for decades, and as a result, many successful grassroots solutions to economic crisis have been developed by people in communities across the continent. In this essay, I propose that strategies from Latin American social movements can be applied elsewhere in the world to build better societies.

The closing lecture given at the XVI Gallega Week of Philosophy, Pontevedra, April 17, 2009. Harnecker examines a new situation faced by the Latin American left, where the emergence of left governments has come out of a crisis in the legitimacy of neoliberalism. She examines the role of social movements, the military, these new governments in the new situation and also looks at Venezuela and socialism of the 21st century.

For the Chavistas, the “revolutionary process” consists of people gaining control of their lives in the areas where they live, more so than in the workplace. This emphasis is reflected in the the fact that the community councils have received far more attention and resources than the worker-management schemes ever did.

If participatory democracy is to offer an alternative it must rise to the direst of challenges. In Venezuela, where the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution explicitly aims to create a "democratic, participatory and self-reliant" society, yet over 100,000 people were killed in a decade, this challenge is insecurity.