04/22/2014
Venezuelan Government Eschews Soviet-Style Socialism
CARACAS – Venezuela’s leftist government is embarked on a process of decentralization of power to avoid the “mistake” of socialism as practiced in Eastern Europe, where a “parasitic elite” arose, Vice President Jorge Arreaza said Monday.
“Each day we are building more popular power, each day there are more communes. There are already 605 communes in Venezuela and we’re going for 3,000,” the son-in-law of late President Hugo Chavez told representatives of 104 communes at an event in Caracas.
The communes, which are political organizations rather than administrative units, date from 2006 and gather together local residents to self-manage their needs on the basis of productive projects using resources and abilities provided by the state.
The 21st-century socialism promoted by Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution is rooted in the progressive decentralization of power, Arreaza said.
“Concentrating power in the state: the mistake of the socialism that arose in Europe in the 20th Century,” the vice president said during the televised event.
“Lenin gave all power to the soviets (workers’ councils), which were like our communal councils, our communes, but then it became distorted and power became concentrated in a parasitic state elite that frustrated the socialist experience,” Arreaza said.
Chavez, who presented the communes as the maximum expression of the self-management of popular power, insisted in the months just prior to his death in March 2013 that he aspired to create 3,000 communes.
Chavez’s aim – and now that of his successor, Nicolas Maduro – was to make irreversible the move toward socialism, whereby it is expected that at the close of the current presidential term, in 2019, seven of every 10 Venezuelans will be affiliated with a commune.
source
Venezuelan Government Eschews Soviet-Style Socialism
CARACAS – Venezuela’s leftist government is embarked on a process of decentralization of power to avoid the “mistake” of socialism as practiced in Eastern Europe, where a “parasitic elite” arose, Vice President Jorge Arreaza said Monday.
“Each day we are building more popular power, each day there are more communes. There are already 605 communes in Venezuela and we’re going for 3,000,” the son-in-law of late President Hugo Chavez told representatives of 104 communes at an event in Caracas.
The communes, which are political organizations rather than administrative units, date from 2006 and gather together local residents to self-manage their needs on the basis of productive projects using resources and abilities provided by the state.
The 21st-century socialism promoted by Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution is rooted in the progressive decentralization of power, Arreaza said.
“Concentrating power in the state: the mistake of the socialism that arose in Europe in the 20th Century,” the vice president said during the televised event.
“Lenin gave all power to the soviets (workers’ councils), which were like our communal councils, our communes, but then it became distorted and power became concentrated in a parasitic state elite that frustrated the socialist experience,” Arreaza said.
Chavez, who presented the communes as the maximum expression of the self-management of popular power, insisted in the months just prior to his death in March 2013 that he aspired to create 3,000 communes.
Chavez’s aim – and now that of his successor, Nicolas Maduro – was to make irreversible the move toward socialism, whereby it is expected that at the close of the current presidential term, in 2019, seven of every 10 Venezuelans will be affiliated with a commune.
source
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