[Marxism] "Venezuela from Below: Interview with George Ciccariello-Maher

[Dbachmozart at aol.com]

Jeffery R.  Webber, "Venezuela from Below: Interview with Political Theorist 
and Journalist  George Ciccariello-Maher" - 
 


In  Venezuela, communal councils are a crucial element of this developing 
reservoir  of dual power. These are small councils operating on a directly 
democratic basis  in open assemblies, endowed with significant power for decision 
making on the  local level (and arguably above the local level). The blossoming 
of the communal  councils -- now numbering in the tens of thousands -- is 
incredible and  inspiring in and of itself, but it doesn't yet represent a proper 
"dual power."  Lenin also emphasizes the need for a dual power to be armed, 
and we see that  this imperative is obviously true in Venezuela: if the state 
maintains a  monopoly on force, then any transformation of that state could only 
occur with  the state's (or more precisely, the military's) consent. But if 
communal  councils merge with local revolutionary militia structures and 
self-defense  organizations (which in some cases have constituted a de facto dual 
power for  decades in some areas) the equation changes, and local communities 
and  revolutionary organizations can make demands of the state, demands with 
teeth.  The basic point is that you can't trust the state to decree its own 
dissolution  (as in the Leninist fantasy of State and Revolution). Nor can you 
ignore it (in  the equally ridiculous anarchist fantasy). All that we can do is to 
force  transformation on the state, and dual power is a mechanism for doing 
just  that.


_http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cm090908.html_ 
(http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cm090908.html) 
 


We have it in our power to begin the world  over again –Thomas Paine



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