[Marxism] Re: A sectarian approach

["David McDonald" <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is remarkably little reference to actual events in Venezuela on this
thread.

What does the Venezuelan leadership think is the main thing right now? I got
a lot of hints by reading the interview with Marta Harnecker on
Venezuelanalysis.com. Here is a lengthy excerpt fromthat interview :

>Together with the ministry for popular participation and social
development, Harnecker is working on the promotion of the communal councils.
?One of the problems we have here is that the new constitution has created
excellent conditions for the protagonist participation of the people, but
these ideas are not always implemented correctly.?

Harnecker cited the example of the Local Councils of Public Planning
(CLPPs), established in the constitution and codified into law. These aimed
to establish a council involving the mayor, the elected members of the
municipal council, the presidents of the Juntas Parroquiales and leaders of
the organised community elected in citizens? assemblies. The idea was that
the community would have 50%-plus-one membership of this body and it would
help to establish where a certain portion of the municipality?s budget went.
Yet in reality there have been many problems in getting these off the
ground.

?For example?, said Harnecker, ?how do you democratically elect
representatives from a community in a citizen?s assembly when we are talking
of a geographic area which is inhabited by thousands or tens of thousands of
people? Whilst the grassroots of the society are not organised, it will be
very difficult for those who make up the CLPP as an expression of the people
to be truly representative.

?That is why it is so important to form the communal councils in small
communities of 200 to 600 families in urban areas and much smaller in rural
areas. The spokespeople of those councils should be the representatives of
that community in the CLPP. The councils also help to resolve the problem of
the dispersion of the organisations that are in the community. There are
many popular organisations which are very focused on their own sector.?

Harnecker explained that what they are proposing with the communal councils
is ?that the community put forward an organisation or space that articulates
all the organisations which exist in a community and that allows the
elaboration of a single plan for the community which includes health,
education, everything, but that it be a single plan?.
Leadership

Through increasing popular participation, Harnecker explained that it ?will
help consolidate this process at the grassroots level, take it forward and
broaden it, creating more forces that are in favour of the process.?
Facilitating popular participation will also help create a whole new
generation of leaders, because ?that is where the people will have to do
things and will have to demonstrate in practice that they are capable of
leading this process. This is why I am enthusiastic about working with the
construction of popular participation at the grassroots level, with the
ideas of the communal councils, because these people are elected according
to the leadership they display in their day-to-day activities.?

This is also how Harnecker sees that the Venezuelan process will be able to
overcome one of its biggest weaknesses ? the lack of a political instrument.
?The different parties and different leaderships have not been able to
integrate in a real way, they are too worried about their own group?s
interests and there is a big problem within the MVR [Chavez?s party, the
Movement for a Fifth Republic], which attempts to impose its hegemony. It is
a ?majoritarian? party that is not really very generous. The problem is not
so much in the top leadership, who understand that it is necessary to give
and create spaces for their allies, but because there are many groups within
the MVR they need to respond to the requirements of each group and that is
where the problem comes from.

?For a while after the referendum it appeared that the UBEs [Units for
Electoral Battle], a brilliant form of organisation, would allow Chavez to
resolve the issue of the connection with the people and how to organise
them. At that moment, a political front could maybe have been created from
the UBEs, where the people involved would have really been those who worked
in the grassroots, with representatives from the parties, but with a
majority who came through because of work in the grassroots. Unfortunately
the conditions were not there, particularly from what I have been told about
the discussion inside the MVR, to accept the idea.?

Harnecker believes that ?unless some very grave event happens that forces
[the parties] to put the interests of the process above all else ... I
foresee a process much longer of construction of leaders, the growth of
leaders via popular participation. In six years I believe we are going to
have a generation of leaders that will impose themselves on this process.?

Asked whether the revolution has six years to solve the problem, Harnecker
replied: ?What Chavez is doing is looking for mechanisms to substitute for
that deficiency. He is the clear conductor of this process, the process
depends a lot on Chavez and that is why the threat of assassination is real.
However, with that conductor and with the popular pedagogy and with a
process that creates opportunities for the people to participate and grow,
this problem is being overcome. It is not a process where the people are
waiting for the leader to deliver them a present, it is a process where the
people are waking up, are auto-affirming themselves, are growing as people,
and are forming themselves in the missions, through [Chavez?s weekly TV
program] Alo Presidente, and through their daily participation.? < [excerpt
ends]

To sum this up in terms of the present Marxmail discussion: the fundamental
axis of the work of the Bolivarian leadership of the Venezuelan revolution
in leadership promotion is to encourage and promote the self-organization of
the masses by bringing them into political life through solving their own
problems on a local, community level. Harnecker says pretty straight
forwardly this local, community based organizing is necessary to force an
opening up of the process to get past the parties' attempts to feather their
own nests, protect and promote their own, and all the usual crap that
parties do. This is a conscious decision to expand the vanguard by going
directly to the masses to get them organized enough on enough fronts that a
vanguard of the whole people, trained and tested in the revolutionary
struggle, can emerge over the course of half a decade and become the
political instrument that does not exist today. If I lived in Venezuela, I
would try to insert myself in that process, at least for starters.


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism