New kind of democracy in Venezuela: Michael Albert
POSTED BY: Howard
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 30, 2025 16:22
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Venezuela's Path
by Michael Albert
November 06, 2005
Going to Venezuela? There are beautiful waterfalls and mountains. There is rich surf, sand, and sun. But nowadays the biggest attraction is revolution.
This October I spent a week in Caracas. That's not much information to work with but for what it's worth, here's what I found and felt.
Toward a New Political System
My first and arguably most personally surprising encounter with the Bolivarian Revolution was at the Ministry for Popular Participation, which was created in accord, I was told, with Chavez's desire "that the people should take power."
I asked the officials we interviewed, "What does that mean, that the people should take power?" After noting thousands of years of "empires obstructing people from participating in politics," all culminating in "the North American empire," the official said the "U.S. has had 200 years of representative government, but in your system people turn over control to others." Instead, in Venezuela, "we humbly are proposing a system where people hold power in a participatory and protagonist democracy. We want a new kind of democracy to attain a new kind of society."
On the wall was a diagram of their aims. It had lots of little circles, then other larger ones in another layer, and so on. The idea, they said, "was to establish numerous local grassroots assemblies or councils of citizens where people could directly express themselves." These local councils would be the foundational components of "a new system of participatory democracy."
The bottom layer of the vision focuses on communities with "common habits and customs," the officials said. "We define them as comprising 200 to 400 families, or 1000 to 2000 people each." One could of course imagine sub units within each local unit, as well, but that wasn't immediately on their agenda, nor was it in their diagram. The local units would in turn send "elected spokespersons" to units another layer up. Units in this second layer would "encompass a broader geographic region," and then from there, "spokespeople would be elected to another layer, and so on," creating a network covering "parishes, municipalities, states, and the whole society."
The participation officials, explaining their diagram and their goal, said the smallest units were meant to become "the decision-making core of the new Venezuelan polity." Chavez and this ministry hoped to have, they said, "3,000 local assemblies in place by the new year." Their goal was to have "enough in place, throughout the country, in 4 or 5 years, to account for 26 million Venezuelans."
They didn't want "a dictatorship of the proletariat or of any other kind," they said. Strikingly, they also said they didn't want "what Che died for, though they wanted to learn from that." They wanted to build something new, from the bottom.
I asked, "What happens if the local assemblies want some new policy, and the ministers, legislature, or Chavez don't want it?" "No matter," they said, "the assemblies, once they are in place and operating, rule."
But, I said, "you don't want an assembly of 100 families making a decision for the whole country, surely." "Correct," came the answer, "the local assemblies can only make final decisions bearing just on their own area."
"Suppose one assembly decides it wants some change bearing on crime that has to do with federal courts or police or whatever, extending beyond that community?" I asked. "What happens? When does the law or policy change?"
"On every level there should be a response" came the reply. "On the lowest level assemblies would do whatever they can within their community. But crime goes beyond a community, and requires going to the next higher levels where the issues would have to be confronted, too. On the municipal level they might change ordinances, etc., to also respond. And it could go higher, then."
Okay, I asked, "Suppose one local assembly wants a younger voting age. They bring it to the next higher level and members there are excited about it too. Doe
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It's often fun to see old hippies pushing a system that has been an abysmal failure in every instance it has been tried. Very Quixote-esque.
Not so much much fun when it's your own country, though. A quick review of the author's body of work is quite revealing.
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Loggerhead,
I really agree. The word you're looking for is quixotic.
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Quote:
Originally posted by loggerhead:
It's often fun to see old hippies pushing a system that has been an abysmal failure in every instance it has been tried. Very Quixote-esque.
Not so much much fun when it's your own country, though. A quick review of the author's body of work is quite revealing.
Seemed very socialist to me. I wonder if the Chinease are their advisors.
I'll be interested to see if it works the way they plan or if its just another way for Chavez to set himself up as the "Great Leader" ala Kim Jung Il, Mao, or Castro. The proof that govts like this are a fraud on both democracy and socialism is when 15 years from now they still have the same ruler.
H
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Hero,
Yes, it would be intersting, but there are some other concerns.
1. Chavez has already become convinced, as socialists often are, that it will work even though it has not yet been tried, rather than wait and see what happens in practice.
2. So he has decided to spread it around the region, supporting the idea of socialist revolution around the region which is likely to create some real disasters.
It's an interesting thought though, do you think the chinese are behind Chavez? They have been looking for an oil-rich socialist state, and had designs on Iraq at the same time as we did. They were planning to support Iran into a dominant military position in an effort to control mid-east oil. That's not a conspiracy threory, BTW, I read it in the people's daily, it was an official chineses govt. position back in 2000 or so. Interceding events have undoubtedly upset that plan, and they have undoubtedly cut a deal with us for uninterrupted oil flow as part of Bush's China-appeasement policy. I imagine this would probably end up being some oil-for-debt program (to offset the tremendous amount of cash we owe China now due to the overspending by this govt.), should we ever happen to secure Iraq.
But it's possible that they would hatch a Venezuela plan for that reason, to be sure to secure an oil source.
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Hero, I feel compelled to agree.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Dreamtrove:
1. Chavez has already become convinced, as socialists often are, that it will work even though it has not yet been tried, rather than wait and see what happens in practice.
I agree, probably more than you realise. I've never seen a time when pure socialism has actually been put into practice, and I know that it wouldn't work if it did.
I agree with what your saying of China as well, America has done similar things through the years, and America is a freedom loving and 'enlightened' society. China isn't, not really (though they are improving, only time will tell on that).
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Sorry about losing it earlier. I was very tense as you get when everyone is arguing against you at once, it wasn't your fault, and it wasn't really your post I was angry at, I just got into a very bad mood.
That said, moving on. Yeah, America does the same thing, no doubt about it. It's important to remember, that whether a society is freedom loving or oppressively totalitarian is really just a representation of its domestic policy. Foreign policy is almost always self serving, from the point of view of a nation. Everyone pretty much is going to say "oh we're freeing these people" but really their not. For Chavez this is "socialist revolutions across latin america" is his way of establishing a network of trading partners, because he knows he's going to end up with an embargo otherwise. For us in Iraq "making the world safe for democracy" is really about making sure America has a steady stream of oil, just as venezuela may be for china. My object to our own current foreign policy is not that it's self serving, it's that it's short sighted and destructive. A truly visionary US would realize that it has the technology right now to become energy independent, and that in 5-10 years it could make a total transition. The amount of oil we would have to buy in that time would not be more costly in a war in Iraq, to say nothing of the long term impact costs of our own self-image destruction.
"Pure" anything is probably impossible because all ideas are enacted by imperfect humans. The larger any implementation becomes, the more imperfect it will become because it will involve a larger number of imperfect humans, and therefore, even if they are selectively chosen, they will increase the average imperfection and multiply it.
China long term can probably not sustain its one party rule. When it crumbles I expect it to fragment like the Soviet Union. But it might not be for many years to come. Two things that I see lead directly to the collapse of the USSR:
1. The cost of maintaining it was an increasing strain on the overall economy compared the benefit of doing so.
2. There was a lack of will at the top to perpetuate it in the face of this cost.
Since this could take decades to come to pass in China, it's possible that we may be facing another cold war.
On the bright side, the cold war wasn't really all that bad.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Dreamtrove:
Sorry about losing it earlier. I was very tense as you get when everyone is arguing against you at once, it wasn't your fault, and it wasn't really your post I was angry at, I just got into a very bad mood.
Yes, these issues can get that way at times. For my part in that little 'exchange' I apologise, as with all things it was half a dozen of one, 6 of the other.
I never meant to insult or attack you or anyone personally, points or their arguments yes, but not them, it's a distinction I try to keep to fairly rigidly because of the natural adversarial nature of these boards. If I came across otherwise I apologise.
Anyway.
Yeah, foreign policy of any nation is pretty self serving, the major differences between America and China is probably Chinese isolationism, imho, and it should be noted that the US has done 'good' in the world, where as China, hasn't, not really on a recent timeline at least.
I agree largely on the issue of Iraqi oil, that is largely why the first Gulf War was fought, I think. In other words protecting the oil reserves of Kuwait, although it should be noted that the first and second Gulf wars are entirely different situations for various reasons.
I don't think the USSR could ever have sustained an Arms race with America, America was always more affluent, for various reasons, including the communist in Russia element.
Personally I think China may be a harder situation to judge, since they are beginning to move toward a more capitalist stance, their economy is blooming, and they simply have more man power and resources than the Soviets, it's possible rather than collapsing like the USSR they'll 'transform' into something else. But on that point only time will tell.
As for the cold war, it was a mixed thing, the world was more 'stable' if you catch my meaning, but there was the possibility of mutually assured destruction, and it's scary how close we all came at times...
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Quote:
Chinese isolationism, imho, and it should be noted that the US has done 'good' in the world, where as China, hasn't, not really on a recent timeline at least.
I know a lot of Chinese and am related to a fair number, so I spend a lot of time focussing on China.
I don't think China is isolationist at all. I think they like to make it look that way, but I think of it as slow-motion imperialism. Recently they have annexed Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao. They would never do what we just did and blatantly invade a country on another side of the world. The gradually annex things, building their claim over decades, setting up puppet govts so friendly that they claim to be part of China, and then 'transferring' troops to defend this 'chinese province.' And so Tibet, QiangXang (sp?) even manchuria should probably be considered a separate country. But they slowly incorporate and then homogenize territories to destroy the local national identity.
In addition though, they do run support programs to other countries who they see as allies, just not as often as we do. A google of "chavez china" produced so many pages proposing the same idea, that he is their new oil kitten, that I think it's definitely worth looking into as a possibility.
Re: The first gulf war
WHAT? You don't think we were just being great defenders of democracy?
Just kidding. What democracy, right?
But seriously, I do think that it's rare to have a blatant situation in which one country openly invades another with the intent to occupy it and add the territory and wealth to its own.
I support our decision to defend Kuwait, and I would like to think that we would do such a thing even if there wasn't oil there, but I am also realistic. But it's not that Kuwait got treatment that it didn't deserve because it had oil. It received the treatment that all sovereign nations deserve and they should get it even if they don't have oil.
Strangely, and I'm not sure why this is, but Darfur which is only really a territory of the Sudan as a result of colonialism, and used to be an independent country, and has virtually nothing in common with its Sudanese occupying force, is getting no help from us, in spite of the fact that it actually does have oil.
Is it possible that the "Bush doesn't care about black people" factor outweighs the "Bush only cares about oil" factor?
It is of course widely know that Clinton doesn't care about black people, as witness his total failure to defend the people of Rwanda, but intervened in Europe.
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