ALL POWER TO THE COMMUNES
Statement by ALBA Movimientos and IPA on the National Popular Consultation in Venezuela
On 25 August, the second National Popular Consultation will take place in Venezuela, where the organised Venezuelan people of the Communes will be able to choose 4,500 projects that will be financed directly by the state. This consultation is an initiative of the Nicolás Maduro government, aimed at strengthening popular power and communal organisation in the country, with an emphasis on local management. This participatory process has a strong assembly spirit because it brings men and women together to discuss the projects in which the state has to invest in order to collectively solve needs.
As Comandante Hugo Chávez said: ‘The Commune must be the space in which we give birth to socialism. Socialism must not emerge from the Presidency of the Republic, it cannot be decreed, it must be created from the ground up, it is a popular creation, from the masses’.
The projects presented to the National Consultation are chosen and managed by the Communal Councils, allowing the full exercise of popular power and the protagonist participation of all the people. This model of participatory democracy strengthens local levels of organisation and empowers all of the society to defend the direct popular initiative as opposed to the bureaucratisation of the state. This process is broad and constitutes a popular celebration led by leaders and the community, who put all their force into giving life and meaning to the territories with a project born of the revolutionary ideas of Comandante Chávez.
We, men and women, from the profoundly authentic popular struggles, raise our fists in defence of the Bolivarian Revolution and support the brave Venezuelan people in their struggle to make the impossible possible: a democracy born from the ground up.
As ALBA Movimientos and the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA), we defend communal democracy and we join in the defence of this model of participation, which has a praxis based on the disruption of individualism to affirm the commitment to the collective, developing a life of solidarity and sustainability among all.
