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Title: Venezuela from Below
Author: Tom Wetzel
Date: 2010
Language: en
Topics: Venezuela, anarchist analysis, statist ideology, review 
Source: Retrieved on April 17th, 2014 from http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/venezuelafrombelow.htm
Notes: Copied from Web

Tom Wetzel

Venezuela from Below

Review: Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle by Rafael Uzcategui (See

Sharp Press, 2010)

In her essay Latin America & Twenty-First Century Socialism (published

as an issue of Monthly Review last year), Marta Harnecker presents a

description of “some features” of a decentralized, self-managed

socialism based on direct democracy in workplaces and neighborhoods--a

picture congenial to libertarian socialists. She also provides an

interpretation of the Bolivarian Movement--the movement led by Hugo

Chavez--that suggests it is embarked on a transition to this kind of

socialism in Venezuela.

Rafael Uzcategui’s book marshalls a lot of evidence to challenge that

interpretation. Uzcategui argues that a continuation of capitalism is a

more likely outcome of the Chavez government than a transition to

socialism. Uzcategui also rejects the right-wing fantasy of

“Castro-style Communism” being set up in Venezuela.

Uzcategui cites with approval the view offered by the radical Uruguayan

journalist Raul Zibechi (author of Dispersing Power). Zibechi believes

that leftist governments in Latin America (including Venezuela) tend to

draw off the organic militants and organizers of popular movements into

the leftist electoral and party projects...leaving a diminished capacity

for independence and combativity among social movements. Given the

poverty and discontent in Latin America, Zibechi argues that this is the

only way for capitalism to survive in that region. This is also how the

book under review sees the movement led by Hugo Chavez. To provide a

critique of the Chavez government from the Left, he interviews and

quotes a variety of people in labor, environmental, indigenous and other

social movements.

Rafael Uzcategui is the primary researcher for the non-profit Venezuelan

Program of Education on Human Rights (PROVEA) and a member of the

collective that produces the anarchist newspaper El Libertario. His book

uses interviews, statistics and reports to provide a picture of the real

situation on the ground in Venezuela. The English edition adds material

for a North American audience that wasn’t in the previous Spanish and

French editions. In this review I’m only going to touch on some of the

topics that are covered in this very detailed study.

The Caracazo and a Crisis of Legitimacy

To explain the emergence of the Chavez movement, Uzcategui looks at the

new social movements that came forth in the ’90s and the growing

discredit of the political parties that had governed Venezuela since the

beginning of “representative democracy” in that country in 1958.

During the first half of the 20^(th) century Venezuela had been governed

by a succession of dictatorships or authoritarian regimes. When

“representative democracy” finally came to Venezuela, it was still a

fragile growth. The parties that alternated in power from the ’60s

through the ’80s--Accion Democratica (AD) and the Social Christian Party

(COPEI)--wanted to ensure that popular discontent didn’t lead to the

overthrow of this new arrangement through another military coup or

popular insurrection. Thus successive governments used the country’s oil

income to build a welfare state. To ensure a solid hold on the income

from hydrocarbon extraction, an AD government nationalized the country’s

oil industry in 1976. The welfare state constructed in that era

included:

- a Social Security system that provided unemployment benefits, pensions

and disability payments

- a free public health care system

- subsidies for the construction of public housing

- subsidies of public utilities, gasoline, and food prices

- free public education at all levels.

The Chavez government’s various initiatives (called “Missions”) to

provide social benefits in areas such as health care, literacy,

subsidized food provision and housing follows in the footsteps of the

earlier populist initiatives of Accion Democratica governments.

In the late ’80s Venezuela began its slide towards neoliberalism with

the imposition of an International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment

Program. The AD president in power at the time then imposed drastic

increases in transportation prices. This provoked a popular rebellion on

February 27, 1989--known as the Caracazo (“Caracas blow-up”). This took

the form of riots and looting of warehouses. The army committed various

massacres in suppressing this rebellion. Hundreds of people were killed.

Thus neoliberalism and repression were the starting points for a crisis

of legitimacy for the old parties. Independent social movements grew in

the ’90s and these became the major source of protests and

demonstrations. Meanwhile, participation in voting plummeted from over

90 percent in the ’60s and ’70s to 56 percent in 2000.

The author describes a variety of social movements that were present in

Venezuela in the years before Chavez came to power--from women’s groups

and the Union of Revolutionary Youth, to indigenous and environmental

groups, and union struggles--such as a fight in defense of social

services in 1996 that brought together more than a hundred unions.

Poorer neighborhoods were often participants in protests such as street

blockades or riots or local “civic strikes” that resulted in shutdowns

of shops and transport. A particularly significant movement in the early

’90s was the Assembly of Barrios in Caracas in which more than 200

neighborhoods were represented. That Assembly was a space for

discussions and debates about the various struggles of particular

neighborhoods.

Says Uzcategui: “In the 1990s, the visions of a different world were

fragmented and isolated, without pretensions of totality. Mobilizations

were, mostly, defensive reactions against government policies....The

internal dynamics of social struggles in Venezuela involved the

development of relationships among the oppressed, which among other

things allowed them to ensure their survival.”

Chavez’s first political vehicle was the Bolivarian Revolutionary

Movement (MBR-200) which grew out of his participation in a failed

military coup in 1992. MBR-200 was a conspiratorial vanguard dedicated

to taking power via insurrection and advocated abstention in electoral

politics. In 1997 Chavez switched gears and decided to run for

president. The wide array of social movements, broad social discontent,

and support from sections of the Left then “translated into votes for

Chavez” when he was elected in 1998. The Chavez victory did reflect the

loss of legitimacy of the old parties and the level of discontent, but

the Chavez government was not a product of an existing, organized social

base. Two attempts of the Chavez forces to build a social base from

above were in the labor movement and in the creation of the community

councils.

Community Councils

Marta Harnecker writes: “Since, in Venezuela, the inherited state didn’t

make enough room for popular protagonism, Chavez had the idea of

encouraging new forms of popular organization and began to transfer

power to them....One of the most original creations of the Bolivarian

revolutionary process was the communal councils, which gave

decision-making on a range of matters to the inhabitants of small

territorial spaces.”

“The Law of Community Councils was approved without any input from the

grassroots,” Uzcategui points out.

Creating the Community Councils (consejos comunales) from above was a

responsibility given over to army general Jorge Luis Garcia Carneiro,

who announced a fund of $982 million for community council projects.

Community councils are rather small in scope, grouping a maximum of 200

families in urban areas, 50 families in rural areas, and as few as 10

families in indigenous areas.

The Community Councils were not the first foray of the Chavez government

into local governance. The first initiative was the creation of Local

Planning Councils. Because these were given certain powers over local

budgeting they were perceived as a direct threat by mayors and city

councils. The mayors began to undermine these councils in various ways

including appointment rather than election of the erstwhile community

representatives.

Chavez got around the local elected government leaders by setting up the

Community Councils with no relation to the local government. The

community councils receive funds through a chain of regional and

national committees that get their orders and funding ultimately from

the office of the presidency. The community councils lack a horizontal

form of association among them and are fragmented through their linkage

directly to the state.

Uzcategui acknowledges that this program has resulted in many

small-scale good works throughout the country, such as sports fields.

But his argument here is that the Community Councils are a means to

build a subordinate local movement, incorporated into the state.

Uzcategui cites the study of the Community Councils conducted by

researcher and environmental activist Maria Pilar Garcia-Guadilla:

“The objectives and rhetoric from most of the political, social, and

governmental actors about Community Councils do not correspond to

practice,” Garcia-Guadilla writes. “While the president’s objectives and

rhetoric concern empowerment, transformation, and democratization, the

observed practices point to dependent clients, cooptation,

centralization, and exclusion for political reasons.”

In her report [1], Garcia-Guadilla says that the dependence of the

Community Councils on the executive of the central state means that

those whose projects fit in with “the president and his project receive

promised resources while those who oppose him must pass through

innumerable bureaucratic procedures that disguise the reason for the

refusal to receive their final application” (my translation).

She cites a number of cases where Community Councils have become defunct

because of lack of continued participation. In the town of Sucre, where

there had been 150 community councils in mid-2007, a later report

indicated that “40 percent were disabled...by defection of their

members.”

As a member of a human rights organization that is concerned with

problems of police and military involvement in extra-judicial killings,

Uzcategui is particularly concerned with the policing and military

functions assigned to the community councils. He points to a major

meeting of community council representatives in Caracas that was

sponsored by DISIP (the political police) and the concerns of the police

and government authorities to make the community councils their “eyes

and ears” in the local communities. Community Councils have also been

pressured to integrate themselves with the initiatives emanating from

the Chavista party, PSUV.

Uzcategui cites one of Garcia-Guadilla’s conclusions:

“The Community Councils...lack the capacity to enrich social and

cultural identities, and to contribute to the pluralism of urban ways of

life because they do not impel movement towards an autonomous,

alternative, and pluralistic society, one separate from the state that”

implements top-down control in the sphere of “social transformation.”

The study by Garcia-Guadilla is a good start to a critique of the

Community Councils but I think Uzcategui would have made a stronger case

if he’d provided more concrete case studies.

Unionism Top-down

Another top-down base-building strategy pursued by the Chavez government

is the creation of labor organizations “from above and by decree.” This

is another case where Chavez follows in the footsteps of the earlier

top-down populism of the Accion Democratica. The Confederation of

Venezuelan Workers (CTV) had originally been created in 1947 in a

top-down fashion. AD instigated a union congress that created a CTV

executive committee made up solely of AD party militants. “When Hugo

Chavez assumed office,” writes Uzcategui, “his intent to control the

labor movement was evident from day one.” In Venezuela a government body

controls union elections. Elections for leadership of CTV were delayed

for two years while Chavez’s forces built the Bolivarian Workers Front

as an internal electoral caucus in the CTV. Huge state resources were

deployed in the campaign to gain control of CTV. A mass meeting was held

in the Caracas Polyhedron--a large venue--and “participants were

transported from all over Venezuela in thousands of buses.” Despite

these efforts, the Accion Democratica slate won the elections.

After that defeat, the Chavez forces then moved to create a new union

federation, Union Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT--National Union of

Workers). When UNT was created, all of its directors had been appointed

from above. According to leftist union current Opcion Obrera (Labor

Option), “there were few authentic directors from a labor background.” A

congress was not called for three years. In 2008 Opcion Obrera wrote,

“The internal crisis of UNT persists and worsens to this day....The

pro-government CTV practices that were criticized are now being repeated

by the leaders of UNT who deliver themselves unconditionally to the

government.”

The incorporation of labor organizations into the Chavista party, PSUV

(United Socialist Party of Venezuela), has been another tactic for

control of the labor movement. In March 2007 Chavez said in a speech:

“The unions should not be autonomous...It’s necessary to do away with

this.”

Orlando Chirino is a revolutionary socialist and former unionist in the

textile industry who was the first National Coordinator of UNT and a

leader of one of the leftist tendencies in it: Corriente Clasista,

Unitaria, Revolucionaria y Autonoma (Class-conscious, Unitary,

Revolutionary and Autonomous Current). Chirino had been active in the

fight against the right-wing coup against Chavez in 2002--in which CTV

supported the conservative opposition--and thus had gotten involved in

the effort to form a new national labor organization. But he very

quickly developed conflicts with the appointed directors and eventually

broke with the Chavez movement. Chirino is particularly critical of the

Chavez government’s dictatorial stance towards workers in the public

sector, expressed in the unwillingness to negotiate with the worker

organizations:

“I want to indicate the most important collective accords that have been

violated. We’ll start with the public workers, approximately two and a

half million workers. It’s been five years, from December 2004, since

their contract standards have been discussed, and this is very grave.

This has resulted in 70 percent of public workers being minimum-wage

workers, which is to say that we’re a country of minimum-wage workers.

It’s been three years since the educators’ collective bargaining

agreement expired; the electrical workers, approximately 36,000 of them,

had their contract expire last year; and the petroleum workers over the

last ten years have lost important gains.”

Wages at the state oil company (PDVSA) were frozen from 2007 to 2009

while inflation was 66.5 percent. Uzcategui quotes an oil worker (from

the leftist website laclase.info) on the result: “Many workers hold

second jobs such as taxi driver or cleaning product salesman.” This oil

worker mentions other problems at PDVSA:

- Failure to supply safety equipment

- Elimination of overtime pay

- Inequities and discrimination in payment of wages

- Criminalization of labor demands by the workers

The government has also refused to allow new elections for union

representatives at PDVSA. About a year ago I interviewed another member

of the El Libertario collective, Rodolfo Montes de Oca. He is a young

lawyer who was working at that time with the radical oppositionists in

the oil workers union (anarchists, Trotskyists, and so on). He says they

had petitioned five times for new union elections and each time they

were denied. He said the head of the union was not regarded as very

effective by the radical workers. He believed that the government

wouldn’t allow a new election because the union head was a Chavista.

The Caracas Metro provides another example of Chavez labor policy. The

workers there had held negotiations with the government representative

for a year and a half and reached an agreement. But Chavez and his new

director of the Metro refused to accept the new agreement. If they were

to strike, Chavez said he would militarize the Metro and fire the

workers. The Chavez government had two police agencies, DISIP (the

political police) and DIM (military intelligence) participate in these

threats. Community councils were mobilized against the Metro workers as

well. Chirino describes what happened then:

“And so, without consulting with the workers,...the directors of the

union who were members of the PSUV [Chavez’s party] went along with the

government demands and rolled back most of the previous gains won.”

Orlando Chirino says that in his 34 years in the labor movement, he’s

“never seen the extreme to which we’re arrived today with the

criminalization of protests....For example, when you’re...handing out

flyers at a factory gate, speaking through a megaphone, participating in

an assembly, they use the repressive bodies of the state to detain the

leaders, take them to jail, and while in jail they accuse them. This

ends up with union militants being prohibited from going near the

businesses where they do their political work, under the legitimate

rights of free expression and organization.”

Partial De-nationalization of Energy Resources

Uzcategui points to the partial de-nationalization of Venezuela’s energy

industry under Chavez as an example of Chavez’s accommodation to

capitalism. An oil industry expert who Uzcategui quotes at length is

Pablo Hernandez Parra. Hernandez Parra had been jailed back in the ’60s

for his participation in leftist armed struggle groups. He was a founder

of the Marxist-Leninist group Bandera Roja (Red Flag). He became part of

a group set up in 2002 to defend the state petroleum industry at the

time of the employer and CTV strike against Chavez. At that time the

bloated managerial bureaucracy at PDVSA--Hernandez Parra calls them the

“meritocracy”--were participating in the strike. According to Hernandez

Parra, the introduction of “mixed enterprises” in the oil and gas sector

since then is a change that is taking place “behind the backs” of the

workers at PDVSA.

Since the nationalization of the oil industry in 1976, and until the

Chavez government, PDVSA’s relationship to the big private oil companies

had taken the form of simple service contracts: The government paid for

services while continuing as the absolute owner of all oil and gas

produced.

The introduction of “mixed enterprises” is an innovation of the Chavez

government. These are companies that typically have 51 to 60 percent

ownership by the state and the major energy firms own the rest. During

the ’90s, politicians in Venezuela had said it was necessary to involve

the multi-nationals to increase oil revenues, but it wasn’t til the

election of Chavez that “mixed enterprises” were created. This

arrangement allows ownership and profits to private energy firms. For

example, Chevron boasts that it is the largest private producer of oil

in Venezuela. In Zulia state it has partial ownership in the mixed

enterprises Petroboscan and Petroindependiente. In Anzoategui state

Chevron is the private partner in another mixed enterprise, Petropiar,

which produces heavy crude and refines it into synthetic petroleum.

Chervon also has various offshore operations, and the government has

also invited Chevron to participate in a rail line to carry liquified

natural gas. There are other oil multi-nationals besides Chevron that

also have invested in “mixed enterprises” to exploit Venezuela’s energy

resources.

For the old guerrilla, Hernandez Parra, the Chavez government’s mixed

enterprises implement “the empire’s petroleum policy.” He described the

concessions granted for mixed enterprises as “the greatest delivery in

the country’s history of petroleum, gas and coal concessions” to the

trans-national companies.

“Socialist” Maquiladora

In May 2009 Chavez announced that the government would set up a factory

to produce cell phones with many features and sold at the low price of

$15. “This telephone will not only be the best seller in Venezuela, but

in the world.” Cell phones are very popular in Venezuela and are, says

Uzcategui, a status symbol in third world countries. The cell phones

would be produced by a Vetelca. Vetelca is another “mixed enterprise.”

According to the Minister of Science and Technology, Jesse Chacon, the

Vetelca plant “is a model of socialist production with ‘integral’

workers who perform different jobs on a daily basis, in order that each

will know the steps of the production process and the complete function

of the plant. In addition, they participate in the planning of the

production process, which clearly shows the difference between this and

the capitalist model.”

To reduce labor costs to the minimum, Vetelca followed the path of so

many high-tech companies to China. The parts are produced in China and

assembled in Venezuela. This talk of “integral labor” is merely a cover

for the multi-tasking that is a common feature of the Toyota or “lean

production” model of capitalist production. This was merely an assembly

operation, using parts made in China. The labor itself did not require

lengthy training. As Uzcategui put it, the plant “is a simple

maquiladora that serves the needs of the state cell-phone company.”

Workers were asked to do long overtime because Chavez wanted 10,000

phones ready for Mother’s Day. According to one of the workers at the

plant, Levy Revilla Toyo, “It was necessary to labor far into the night;

this labor was done without logistical preparation, which caused dismay

among some comrades because of lack of nourishment and trouble with

transport.”

The law on working conditions approved by the government in 2005 allowed

for the election of safety delegates and three were elected at the

Vetelca factory. On July 7, 2009, however, Vetelca fired eight workers,

including the three safety delegates who had been elected at a worker

assembly. Later, Vetelca management asked the National Guard to protect

the plant from the workers. The company fired 56 workers who were forced

to sign resignation letters to obtain their final pay.

In fact these workers were fired for trying to form a union at the

plant. The manager of Vetelca said this to the press: “These fifty-six

persons had the intention of creating a union...and with an aggressive,

instigating attitude.” The manager also stated that the company was

going to form a “security” group “because in a socialist enterprise

there’s no room for the word ‘union’.”

A Fragmented Health Care System

Uzcategui describes the Chavez initiatives in health care as the most

important of the “Missions” established by the government. The idea is

to have medical personnel living in the communities they serve (hence

the name “Barrio Within”), create a network of people’s clinics, and

provide high-quality diagnostic centers. Uzcategui cites a report by a

non-profit that notes an inequity in the distribution of resources

between different parts of the country with a very high concentration of

doctors and resources in the capital district (where Caracas is

located).

According to a report by Marino Alvarado, the coordinator of the human

rights organization PROVEA:

“Since the government proposed Barrio Within, PROVEA has supported it;

but it doesn’t appear to be an adequate program....The nationality of

the doctors doesn’t matter to us but rather that they be where the poor

people reside. However, Barrio Within has been manipulated to not only

engage in health care but also in political proselytization. The

government promised to construct thousands of health modules in the

country, but has constructed only half of them....But it’s necessary to

emphasize the positive in the government’s policy of providing free

health care....For us, the problem is the limited coverage.”

However, the Barrio Within program is separate from the traditional

system of public hospitals. This has created a fragmented system of

health care with resources stacked in favor of the programs initiated by

the Chavez government. People can go to a local clinic if they have a

broken bone, or fever but they have to go to the underfunded,

understaffed public hospitals for more complex procedures.

A hospital worker interviewed by Uzcategui is Johan Rivas, who works at

Dr. Jose Ignacio Baldo Hospital. Rivas is a member of the Revolutionary

Socialist Collective. Rivas points out that the health care Missions

“have the same bureaucratic structure as the traditional system, a

system constructed from the top down where there’s no true participation

of those below....The communities only advise and the workers have no

say.”

Rivas believes that the funding and emphasis has shifted to creation of

a parallel system because the old health care system “is a refuge for

the political opposition--most of its managers are tied to the

opposition parties.”

A large number of the workers at the hospitals are hired on precarious

individual contracts. Says Rivas:

“I can cite cases of women who were discriminated against because they

became pregnant, and so had to abandon their contracts. Infirmary

workers who’ve worked three or four months receive their wages a month

or two late....People wait up to two years for a contract and permanent

status and receive pressure...not to participate in such-and-such a

political organization.....There are presently more than 25,000 workers

in the health sector in Caracas and more than half of them are” temps.

Meanwhile, the government refuses to negotiate with health care worker

unions. Says Rivas: “Health care workers, in the case of common

laborers, have worked for 15 years without a collective bargaining

agreement. The other workers have worked for five years without an

agreement The government has not had a policy to improve the quality of

life for health care workers.” Meanwhile, bureaucrats in the Chavez

government attend private clinics for health care, not the public

system.

As a result of their criticisms of the Chavez government, Johan Rivas

and the Revolutionary Socialist Collective have been labeled

“counter-revolutionaries” by the Chavistas. This behavior is part of the

polarized “us versus them” dynamic in Venezuelan politics. Uzcategui

calls this tendency a “false dichotomy” because it crowds out and

suppresses other viewpoints. But the ability of ordinary people and

participants in social movements to debate freely and develop their own

path, from the bottom up, is necessary for the autonomy of social

movements.

Social Movements as Revolutionary Subject

Top-down state initiatives, a movement headed by a charismatic caudillo

(top-down leader or “strong man”), benefits provided to dependent

clients, attempts to control and coopt unions and other social

movements, hundreds of military officers holding posts throughout the

government, repression towards those who stray outside the permitted

path--these elements suggest that the Bolivarian Movement is following

in the tradition of Latin American populism. For example, the

“revolutionary nationalism” of General Lazaro Cardenas, president of

Mexico in the ’30s, also included “socialist” and “anti-imperialist”

rhetoric and an occasionally pugnacious stance towards the USA--for

example, nationalization of the oil companies and violation of the

Neutrality Act in giving military aid to the Spanish Republic. A section

of the railway network was even handed over to the workers’ union to

manage.

But the “revolutionary nationalism” of Cardenas was no threat to Mexican

capitalism. On the contrary, the Mexican “revolutionary nationalist”

leaders crushed the independent, revolutionary labor movement of the

syndicalist CGT--a significant service to capitalist interests.

Uzcategui suggests that a rising level of protests and demonstrations in

the last couple years shows that the social movements in Venezuela are

beginning to recover their autonomy. Populism is a danger to the

autonomy of social movements as it works to incorporate and control such

movements through the party and state structures and clientelist

relationships. For Uzcategui, autonomy is essential for social movements

if they are to be the basis for a liberatory transformation of society.

We can think of autonomy as both independence from parties, the state

and top-down forms of control, and also the ability to plan out and

decide on their own course of action through the self-management of

movements by their participants. Uzcategui sees autonomy as necessary if

movements are to develop the “combativity” to challenge the existing

order and press for changes.

However, he rejects a class struggle perspective as somehow no longer

valid for the anti-capitalist struggle and substitutes the vague idea of

the “multitude”--drawn from Hardt and Negri’s Empire--as his conception

of the revolutionary subject. If we acknowledge the diversity of the

various social movements and forms of oppression, there is then the

question of how these can come together and form a unified force to

challenge the powers-that-be. A weakness of Uzcategui’s perspective is

that he never addresses this. Uzcategui doesn’t consider the idea of the

various oppressions and movements as still within the ambit of the

working class, and thus capable of forming a working class alliance.

The Dual Character of Self-management

In her interpretation of the Bolivarian “revolutionary process,” Marta

Harnecker presents a concept of transition to self-managed socialism in

which the bureaucratic, “inherited state” co-exists for a long time with

what she describes as a “new state.” “New state” is her term for the

emergence of the new system of neighborhood councils and worker councils

that would be the basis of control by the masses over the work, their

communities and the society. She writes:

“The fact that the state institutions are run by revolutionary cadres,

that are aware they should aim to work with organized sectors of the

people to control what the institutions do and to press for

transformation of the state apparatus, can make it possible...for these

institutions to work for the revolutionary project.”

This is in reality the old idea that somehow the liberation of the

oppressed and exploited can be brought about from above by enlightened

leaders controlling the state. What we see in the case of the Bolivarian

Movement, on the other hand, is how these “revolutionary cadres” in

control of the state work to coopt and control social movements.

A self-managed socialist society is not likely if it isn’t a conquest

won by self-managed mass organizations of the oppressed and exploited.

Thus self-management has a dual character: self-management of struggles

for change, and self-management of the gains won through struggle.

Through self-management of struggles within the capitalist society,

against employers and in other areas of oppression, people change and

gain various capacities....increased commitment and organizing skills,

increased knowledge of the system and of other groups in struggle and

their issues. Self-management of movements itself is developed through

struggle because people learn the importance of controlling their own

movements. Self-managed, organized mass movements are needed if the

oppressed and exploited are to develop vehicles through which they can

control--self-manage--the process of change and the building of new

institutions through which they can gain power. For example, actual

worker control over the production process is not likely to come about

except through a workers movement that has developed the aspiration for

more power and the capacity to run its own movement.

Uzcategui quotes with approval a well-known passage from John Holloway:

“If we rebel against capitalism it’s not because we want a different

system of power, rather it’s because we want a society where power

relations have vanished. You can’t construct a society without power

relations through conquest of power. Once you adopt the logic of power,

the struggle against power is already lost.”

But this “anti-power” viewpoint is a very misguided way of looking at

the process of social liberation. Liberation from capitalist domination

and exploitation can’t happen if workers don’t gain the power to control

the industries where they work. Liberation from the state and various

forms of oppression also requires re-organizing decision-making power so

that the oppressed gain the power to make the decisions that affect

them. This is not elimination of “power relations” but a change in the

way power is organized. Authentic popular power is necessary for

liberation.

Endnotes

[1] Maria Pilar Garcia-Guadilla “El poder popular y la democracia

participativa en Venezuela: Los consejos comunales”

http://www.nodo50.or/ellibertario/PDF/consejoscomunales.pdf