What I'm Reading: George Ciccariello-Maher, "Building the Commune"

Whoa. 

I didn’t know much about Venezuelan politics or history before reading this book, and having read it I now realise just how much of what I thought I knew was wrong. Not just wrong, but how foolish it was to apply the kinds of models of government and economy I’m familiar with to a country going through something so radical, so beautiful, so balls-to-the-wall out there as Venezuela. I blithely assumed that there was the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan people, you know, like the UK, and that was all there was to it, but what Ciccariello-Maher opened my eyes to was the way that an entirely new system of government and economy is being built inside that old, decaying structure (which in some quarters is trying to cling on and even bloodily re-assert itself).

This is a book about Venezuela’s communes: the growing network of co-operative, self-managing, independent radical groups building the new world in the shell of the old. Seeking to create a new kind of environmentally sustainable, directly-democratic alternative to capitalism from the bottom up, the comuneros and comuneras have rejected the kind of ‘devolution’ that neoliberalism promises and instead staked direct claims to the land and resources they need:

“Building communal power meant dissolving political power into the community itself; it meant a “broadening of democracy in which the communities will assume the fundamental powers of the state.” This was not mere “decentralisation,” however, the buzzword of choice for the neoliberal reformers of the 1990s, who sought to reduce the role of the state to benefit not community but capital. The communal alternative Kléber and Chávez envisioned was never about decentralising power but organising power in the barrios and the country from the bottom up.”

Chávez was instrumental in giving the communes some legal authority but the movement preceded him and has outlasted him too. It’s hard not to think that Venezuela is a step ahead of my country, contrary to what British news would I think have me believe, since the neoliberal economic policies that have wreaked so much havoc here were definitively rejected by the Venezuelan people in the Caracazo of 1989, despite the opposition’s efforts to reanimate the vampire. Some of the most useful bits were the little factoids that put news reports I’ve seen about Venezuela in new context; I especially enjoyed the section on the building of urban communes, which acts as a definitive rejection of the idea (so common in my country) that those who are not employed in the private sector are dependent on the state:

“Still capitalist, not yet socialist, Venezuela stands uncomfortably between two economic systems and two different states, with the contradictions of each reaching a fever pitch. The construction and consolidation of grassroots power from below in Venezuela has been a long and arduous process, stretching across decades. Today, this alternative power emerging from below, this dual power, is seeking out an alternative space in the communes in which to make the long-promised revolution a concrete reality.”

This isn’t just an education on Venezuela, but a standpoint from which I could potentially re-evaluate my own country. It’s the second of Ciccariello-Maher’s books I’ve read and it’s a great deal more accessible than Decolonizing Dialectics, pitched at a lay rather than academic audience and full of clear, helpful rundowns of the histories and figures at the centre of the Venezuelan struggle. Ciccariello-Maher has travelled through the cities, communes and barrios interviewing revolutionaries and government officials to bring their words to this book. Although some sections feel a little romanticised (there’s an extended metaphor involving bees that’s quite cheesy) they are counterpointed by frank, honest discussions of the contradictions and drawbacks of the communal approach and the challenges that lie ahead. la comuna o nada!

Thank you Sammy Blanchette for sending me this from my wish list! If you’d like to get it, you can get it here:
UK link
US link