Venezuela: reform strengthens popular power
- Details
- Created: Thursday, 03 August 2023 15:36
- Written by Sam McGill
On 22 June Venezuela's National Assembly approved a major reform to the 'Organic Law of Communal Councils'. Celebrated by communal activists and deputies in parliament, this is a victory for socialist forces, placing popular power back on the agenda. Communal councils and communes, structures of participatory democracy and collectivised production, are a vehicle for working class power in Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution; yet they exist alongside traditional forms of bourgeois democracy. The ruling PSUV socialist party is an electoral coalition, containing radical currents committed to socialist revolution alongside self-serving capitalists hungry for state contracts. Recently, in the face of asphyxiating US sanctions which have cost an estimated $350bn, the PSUV government has pursued capitalist solutions, handing over land, state-owned industries and property to big business. Private profits have grown whilst communes have clamoured for resources. The communal movement has pushed back against this trend and finally secured a reform that recognises and enhances the ability of the working class to organise at grassroots level.
