Upstream - [TEASER] Venezuela Pt. 2: Socialist Communes and Anti-Imperialism w/ Chris Gilbert

Starting point is 00:00:00 A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode, thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making upstream possible. We genuinely couldn't do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and provide most of our content for free so we can continue to offer political education media for the public and help to build our movement. Thank you, comrades. We hope you enjoy this conversation. Our Our first stop was a Maizal commune, which is a rural commune. And it's probably the most famous commune in Venezuela.

Starting point is 00:00:53 One of the things that we saw there was not only the people were producing and highly organized inside this commune, which controls about 5,000 acres of land, does cattle production, maize production, makes cheese, and cornflower. But the most impressive thing was really the level of kind of political development people had there. It was a time in which many people were feeling the moral blows. You know, morale was low because of the sanctions. But their morale was very high. And one of the things you sensed was that the highest ideals of the revolution were maintained there. And I think that's because of practice. You know, people need to have a school to make themselves into revolutionaries, and the commune serve as a kind of school for those, for forming oneself as a

Starting point is 00:01:36 revolutionary, precisely because it separates you from just working for capital, you know, working for the boss, but rather working for your community. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. If the first thing you think about when you think about Venezuela is the gang Trende Aragua, or the Cartel of the Sons, or even just a failed socialist state, then we're sorry to inform you that capitalist propaganda has done a number on you. No, Venezuela is not a failed narco state,

Starting point is 00:02:20 exporting gang members to the United States. It's actually one of the most important and fiercely defended socialist state projects this planet has ever seen. And one of the most interesting, unique, and successful components of this project are the socialist communes that stretch across the country, producing both material and political goods. In this episode, part two of our ongoing series on Venezuela, we're joined by Chris Gilbert to discuss Venezuela's socialist communes from a Marxist, anti-imperialist perspective. Chris Gilbert is a professor at Venezuela's Bolivarian University and a writer based in Caracas. Grounded in a Marxist perspective, his research includes communes, socialist strategy, social

Starting point is 00:03:09 reproduction theory, and imperialism. He's the author of Commune or Nothing, Venezuela's Communal Movement and its Socialist Project, and Venezuela, the present and as Struggle, Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution with Sierra Pascual Marpina. He's also the co-host of the Marxist educational podcast and television program, Esquela de Quadros. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Chris Gilbert. Chris, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Starting point is 00:03:55 Happy to be here. I'd love to start with just a basic introduction. So if you could just introduce yourself for our listeners and talk a little bit about the work you do. Sure. My name is Chris Gilbert. I've lived in Venezuela for almost 20 years. I came here for the simple reason of wanting to participate in the revolution. I came here in 2006 with a desire to learn from and participate in the revolutionary process. and I quickly was employed in the Bolivarian University and an experimental university where I teach political studies.

Starting point is 00:04:25 Over the past five years, five or six years, I've been systematically researching communes, which are kind of the mainstay of Venezuela's socialist project. And that's been systematic research, involved research trips, intermittent publications, and a book that I published approximately two years on that's called Commune or Nothing, Venezuela's communal movement, and a socialist project.

Starting point is 00:04:47 Awesome. Yeah, thanks for that introduction. And I'm going to put a link to that book in the show notes so that people can check it out. And we're also going to be talking about a couple of pieces that you wrote in monthly review to learn more about socialism and how it relates to communes and how the commune movement in Venezuela works and what it looks like. So the first piece is titled Socialist Communes and Anti-Imperialism. the Marxist approach. And it's all about communes. And I really, really enjoyed reading this, actually. It's a really, really great piece. And yeah, maybe we could start with like a basic

Starting point is 00:05:30 description of the commune from a Marxist perspective and the role that it plays in specifically anti-imperialist resistance. Because I think that many on the left may associate communes with, you know, like a certain kind of like hippie or even libertarian sort of project. And, you know, some may also think of more like anarchist-inspired communes. The commune that you talk about in the piece, the one that you highlight is explicitly Marxist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist. So maybe just set us up with a basic introduction here and then we will dive deeper as we move forward. Sure, the Venezuelan commune, as you point out, the Venezuelan commune isn't an anarchist

Starting point is 00:06:18 proposal, and it's not a hippie commune. Obviously, the hippie commune was a worthy endeavor in many senses, but it was a limited to a middle-class, they were middle-class intentional communities. And something has been more lasting and captured many people's imagination or the anarchist libertarian communes that exist. Even now, for example, you could say that the end result of the Zapatist experiments are kind of anarchist communities. communities. And another focus for people's interest of that kind is Rojava and the Kurdish communes. Those are communes that put a heavy emphasis on autonomy. And in my opinion, they tend to have a severe limitation because of their inability to connect with a national project, a project

Starting point is 00:07:01 of national liberation. The Venezuelan commune is a different animal. It was born in the middle of a project that had already declared itself anti-imperalist and declared itself to be socialist. and it was part of an effort to build socialism on a national scale. And in fact, when Chavez launched the project, Hugo Chavez, the former president, great leader of Venezuela, when he launched the project, he insisted that the communes were going to be part of a national communal system. And right now, there's approximately 5,000 registered communes in Venezuela.

Starting point is 00:07:32 The communes are on a big scale. They often incorporate up to 10,000 people. Some of them include up to 5,000 acres of land. So the scale is very important, and the system, the national system that's been developed is also important. Now, when I wrote that essay, I was thinking about the moment we're living in which imperialism is extremely evident. What we call the principle of contradiction is extremely evident. For many people, including me, the genocide, this Israeli-U.S. genocide being carried out against Palestinians has been a terrific eye-opener to the exterminous character of imperialism.

Starting point is 00:08:10 And in a smaller way, in a slower way, we've been living that here in Venezuela because of the sanctions that have been put against us and other aggressions like the coup d'etat. And right now, as we speak on the 23rd of September, there's been a severe escalation against Venezuela because military ships have been moved into the Caribbean and they've carried out assassinations against boats that are going in the Caribbean. So the teeth of imperialism are very present, a kind of big stick diplomacy is being recreated in the Caribbean area. And so this question of like when a commune is anti-imperialist is one that I thought was urgent, and I attempted to address it in a recent essay. You mentioning and equating on some level, maybe not exactly the same degree, the sanctions with the genocide, is actually quite apt when you think about the numbers over. overall over like the past 50 years, I know that Jason Hickle, the economic anthropologist and frequent

Starting point is 00:09:11 guest on our show, put out a paper, I guess, or an article on his substack, where he cited here that 38 million deaths since 1970 caused by unilaterally imposed sanctions by the US and the EU. So when we're talking about the sanctions in Venezuela, like we're talking about maybe not equivalent to those numbers. That's 50 years all over the world, but it just gives you a sense of the staggering impact of these sanctions. And that's just deaths, right? That's not immiseration and suffering. So I appreciate you bringing that piece into it. So let's talk a little bit more, though, about this piece that you wrote. So Marx studied and analyzed communes quite a bit during his lifetime. I think that most of us are familiar with his analysis.

Starting point is 00:10:02 on the Paris Commune, you actually quote Marx. There's a quote for Marx at the top of your piece from the Civil War in France, which is the piece that you wrote about the commune. But there's not as much that at least, you know, I've come across that sort of looks at Marx's analysis of communes from this more like anti-colonial perspective. You even bring in sort of, I think you mentioned like a tri-continental perspective on communes, which I thought was really neat. So, maybe you could tell us a little bit about how Marx viewed communes in this light, in this like anti-colonial, maybe you could call anti-imperialist light. And yeah, just unpack like how he viewed them as like a potential organizational cell of socialism.

Starting point is 00:10:53 Those are very precise and apt words, that organizational cell of socialism. That's in fact the term that Chavez used in 2009 when he launched the project. So when we talk about Marx and communes, many people know the writings on the Paris commune, and other people also know the writings that the later writings in which the anti-colonial element of communes becomes particularly evident. That's as a result of the mega project, the big Marxist investigation. Increasingly, we know more about Marx's letter as his notes from the late period. And at that point, he turned to investigating societies around the world, which today would be

Starting point is 00:11:26 called anthropological research. he started to digest anthropological research in a huge way. And that led to reflections on communes around the world. And that's where I talk about the tri-continental, the essentially tri-continental perspective of Marx, because, for example, he was interested in the Asian communes, and especially in India, Indian villages essentially constituted communes in which they were diversified production.

Starting point is 00:11:51 And, of course, they were subordinated to a tributary system, a British colonial tributary system. And prior to that, an Indian indigenous tributary system. but they were communally organized internally. And then Marx's last trip was to Algeria, a country under French colonial rule. But he was especially interested in the communal land tenure that existed there and how it served as a point of resistance to French colonialism. And then in Americas, he digested research about Aztec communities, communes.

Starting point is 00:12:19 Essentially, under the Aztec Empire, there was a communal arrangement of societies. And perhaps even more interestingly, in the Incan world, So even now, those same communists, types of communes, village communes exist. They're called Ilu's, and they exist throughout the Andean world. So Marx was looking at all these communes among peoples that were colonized, and I think that's not an accident. People often understand that Marx's late in his life had this increased interest in communal organization, but it was a long-term project of Marx.

Starting point is 00:12:48 In fact, you can see how communes are actually part of the Grundries. One of the most famous sections of the Grundris manuscript, which is 1858, 1859, is called precapitalist social formations, was published and translated earlier than the rest of the Grimuris in English. And there, Marx talks about different communal formations. And that becomes very important for his understanding, even of the critique of political economy that he carries out thereafter. The Grondyce is kind of the first instance of the critique of political economy that ends up being capital, an unfinished word. But there he sees communes, in some sense, the communal world in which people exchange use values, becomes the kind of lever by which he critiques

Starting point is 00:13:26 capital's political economy. And it also becomes the future world that he projects when he talks about associated producers. So I maintain that Marx had a longstanding interest in communes. It's kind of a red thread that runs through his work. And for that reason, I find it particularly problematic when people try to separate one element of Marx, like they just focus on the Paris commune, or they just focus on the late work. Because it's extremely important right now to understand these anti-colonial dimensions of the anti-colonial dimension that Marx highlighted in his late work when he saw the communes in India and Algeria in the Americas as resisting colonial advances. And also the anti-colonial element that should be seen when we understand that when Marx proposed associate producers,

Starting point is 00:14:10 he was connecting that to his whole critique of political economy, which was also a critique of the world market. So there was always this kind of geopolitical, anti-capital, but also geopolitical element to his understanding of the communal alternative, that today would be anti-imperialism. So that's what I see is realized in the Venezuelan project. I see the Venezuelan project as being true to that Marxist idea of a commune that's part of a project of national liberation, part of an anti-capitalist project, but also anti-imperialist project. So Chavez said things like the commune being part of a cell of a socialist project, and he also insisted on the need for a communal system.

Starting point is 00:14:46 And also, you can see how the communes have actually been functional or extremely important in maintaining and advancing the anti-imperialist project here, not only the anti-capulist project with the anti-imperialist project. Yeah, yeah, amazing. Let's get a little bit more into the Venezuelan context. And I'd love to start with a little bit of history. So, yeah, just maybe give us a little bit of a sense of how the communes evolved as part of the Bolivarian process. Like there's a interesting quote from this piece that we're discussing right now of yours where you write The Bolivarian Process became anti-imperialist in 2004, then incorporated socialism in 2006, then began using communes as the basic cells of its anti-imperialist social project in 2009, 2010. So right there you can see sort of this evolution and the incorporation of anti-imperialist.

Starting point is 00:15:45 imperialism and socialism and then communes into this larger project. So yeah, maybe just unpack the history a little bit for us and give us a sense of how this all unfolded. Sure, when the Bolivrain process has deep roots, obviously even the term Bolivarian points to those long roots, at least 200 years old roots, but actually going further back to even anti-colonial struggles here that reach back 500 years. But in some ways, just to make the story shorter, you can talk about Chavez emerging as a figure in the 1990s in the wake of an uprising here that's called the Caracaso. And so Chavez actually attempts to, with other young officers, he attempts to take power in the wake of the Caracazo, because in the Caracaso, it was a popular uprising, but there were 4,000 people

Starting point is 00:16:28 massacred in the repression that followed. And so Chavez and other young officers attempt to take power unsuccessfully through a military uprising in 1992. Chavez goes to prison for about two years, and then he comes out of prison and becomes a national campaign that eventually turns into an electoral campaign. And so he wins the elections in 1998. He becomes president in 1999. At that point, he has ideas about popular sovereignty, popular participation, popular democracy, but he's not a socialist, and nor is he declared anti-imperialist.

Starting point is 00:17:02 As a successful, a briefly successful coup d'etat carried out in 2002, and that's turned around in one of the most glorious and known moments of the Bolivarian process in which two days later, or immediately following the coup d'etat, mass has come out and support him, insist that he must be returned. And so they managed to reverse the coup d'etat in a very brief period. But in the wake of that coup d'etat, that's when Chavez becomes more eager to advance on the social front and also more clearly anti-imperialist. And so it's in 2004 in Argentina.

Starting point is 00:17:33 These are just kind of like landmarks. Obviously, they reflect important social, historical processes that involve masses and not just one person. But it's in Argentina that Chavez says that it's interesting because he's quoting the World Social Forum idea that he says, a better world as possible, another world is possible. And he says, if it's socialist. And so that's when he's advancing the idea of socialism. I'm sorry, to back up a bit previously declares it anti-imperialist. And then he riffs on the World Social Forum slogan and says that a better world is possible if it can be socialist. And then it's about three years after the socialist declaration that after a series of experiments that

Starting point is 00:18:10 involved cooperatives, sometimes co-managed, occupied in co-managed factories, and the formation of community councils. So these are different experiments. The community council is an experiment in local democracy, and every community of about 300 families in Venezuela participates in forms of community council. And then there was an important cooperative movement that lasted for years, and there's still our cooperatives that are a result of that. And then around 2005, 2006, there's an attempt to make co-managed factories. But I think in the wake of those only partial successes, the community councils are very successful, but the cooperatives reeled only partially positive results, and the co-managed or occupied factories also partially successful projects. So that's when

Starting point is 00:18:55 he turns to the commune as an example. And I think one way of understanding the communes in Venezuela and the way they're conceived, apart from belonging to this national system that we talked about, is that they're an attempt to synthesize a kind of local self-government with production, incorporating productive elements. And especially important is the democratic local control over the production. That's where it becomes a kind of a very advanced project, because once you start talking about worker control of production, then you're talking about really overcoming the rule of value, the tiering of value,

Starting point is 00:19:30 and a whole horizon of socialist goals emerge there. One is overcoming the commodity form, you know, the commodity exchange, which is far from happening, but you could say that it opens the first steps in that process. And also, gender oppression, racial oppression, because a lot of at least gender oppression is based on the unpaid or unwaged domestic labor and the kind of two-tiered system, which capitalism maintains between unpaid domestic labor and other kinds of unpaid labor that is often usually assumed by women or racialized people, and on their hand, wage labor. So there's a kind of hierarchy within capitalism. But once you begin to overcome the rule of value of capitalist value production, which can be done in a communal setting where there's democratic control of the community, but also the production, you can overcome those hierarchies. So that's what makes the communal project, such an ambitious one.

Starting point is 00:20:18 But in my work, especially recently, I've been inclined to emphasize how the commune is not simply something that comes out of nothing. It's a product, you know, it synthesizes or subsumes the whole of what's been previously accumulated, including the anti-imperialist drive and, of course, the socialist drive in a more explicit sense. This was a clip from our Patreon episode with Chris Gilbert. You can listen to the full episode by becoming a Patreon subscriber. Through Patreon, you'll have access to bi-weekly bonus episodes,

Starting point is 00:20:51 access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and to stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support, you'll be helping us keep upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support.

Upstream - [TEASER] Venezuela Pt. 2: Socialist Communes and Anti-Imperialism w/ Chris Gilbert

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