Patro Anaya | Unión Proletaria (Spain)
Known worldwide for its colossal natural wealth, Venezuela is much more than mere booty for imperialist looting. It is a coastal country in northern South America, with a territory twice the size of Spain and a population of approximately 29 million inhabitants, positioning itself among the ten most biodiverse nations on the planet.
Its material wealth is well known and constitutes a coveted objective:
• Energy: It possesses the largest oil reserves in the world and vast natural gas reserves.
• Precious and Strategic Minerals: It has significant deposits of gold, diamonds, and coltan, in addition to being rich in iron, bauxite, nickel, copper, and rare earth elements.
• Vital Resources: It houses one of the largest freshwater basins on the continent and an immense variety of non-metallic resources.
Faced with this inventory, the question arises: Is it only the looting of these resources that motivates the military aggressiveness of U.S. imperialists?
The answer transcends the material. There exists a strategic asset, as potent as it is invisible to the world, which represents an existential threat to the capitalist order: the sovereign organization of the Venezuelan working people into Communes.
In the context of an undeclared Third World War, driven by imperialism in crisis, the Bolivarian Revolution prepares to fulfill the testamentary mandate of Commander Hugo Chávez: “Independence or nothing, commune or nothing.” This is not a rhetorical slogan; it is the realization of an alternative popular power.
The socialist Commune is the bulwark that guarantees the freedom and prosperity of Venezuela. It is this capacity for self-government, for resistance from the grassroots, and for the construction of an alternative social model that makes global elites tremble. The United States does not only seek its resources; it needs to annihilate the example that an organized people can be masters of their own destiny, because that is an ideological virus they cannot control.
Commune or Nothing!
This slogan synthesizes a project of popular organization. In his speech on October 20, 2012, Chávez raised the need to weave a new type of network to cover the territory, warning that, otherwise, the project would be absorbed by the old system, which he compared to a “gigantic amoeba” or a “monster”: capitalism. [1]
The communal model strikes its roots in the heroic Paris Commune of 1871, gestated as a response to the betrayal of the bourgeoisie and recognized as the first workers’ government in history. This legacy was subsequently developed and expanded by the soviets or councils in Russia—grassroots organs that merged legislative and executive functions, with representatives who were revocable and subject to an imperative mandate.
Even before all this, the Communero rebellion of El Socorro in 1781, in the Colombo-Venezuelan Andes, proclaimed the “Union of the oppressed against the oppressors.” [2]
Following the death of Commander Chávez, Venezuela faced an escalation of external aggressions, with sanctions led by the United States in support of internal counter-revolution. These attempts failed thanks to the foundation of popular organization previously built, the wisdom of a mobilized people, and the leadership of President Nicolás Maduro in the continuity of the Bolivarian legacy.
The Venezuelan experience has demonstrated that success in overcoming poverty does not reside in the programs of organizations like the IMF or the World Bank, but in the strengthening of national sovereignty and the social orientation of the economy. [3] In other words, during the last 25 years, this revolutionary project has become the expression of the political will of centralized power and the enthusiasm of the popular communes for the benefit of the majority of Venezuelan society.
Commune? What is it and how is it formed?
The Commune in Venezuela represents the fundamental cell of a new model of social, political, and economic organization. It emerges as a model of social and territorial organization that promotes collective practice. It is the materialization of a project of popular power that seeks to transform the structure of the State from the base.
Origins and Evolution
The process began in 2003 with the promotion of forms of collective praxis such as cooperatives, Social Property Enterprises, and factories under workers’ control. The official push for communes occurred in December 2008, merging material resources with a firm political will to drive an alternative economy.
The Commune is defined as a unit of local government with a territorial dimension, born from the concerted union of several Communal Councils following a detailed study of their geographical and social space. It functions as an organ of power based on the search for collective solutions. [4]
Its objective goes beyond satisfying immediate material needs; it proposes to reduce the nation’s historical deficits, settle social inequalities, and include traditionally marginalized sectors, thus advancing toward the construction of a new social model. [2]
Legal and Institutional Framework
The State has promoted this process through legal and institutional tools, including:
• April 25, 2019: The Bolivarian University of Communes is founded (Official Gazette No. 6,453), for the theoretical and practical training of comuneros.
• December 30, 2024: The Reform Law of the Organic Law of Communes was enacted (Extraordinary Gazette No. 6,872), consolidating its legal framework and establishing its current physiognomy. This law expands democracy by establishing that the Assembly of Citizens is the holder of the power to decide. [5]
Structure and Functioning: The Government of the Commune
The law establishes the concept of the Government of the Commune, which synthesizes the organizational, administrative, and articulatory forms within the territorial space where it is seated. [6]
Its structure is composed of:
• Parliament of the Commune (Legislative instance)
• Executive Council of the Commune
• Controlling Council (Fiscal) of the Commune
• Council of Justice of the Peace of the Commune
• Electoral Commission of the Commune
• Bank of the Commune
This Government is responsible for planning, administering, and executing communal management, acting as a bridge with the State for the implementation of public policies. In this way, when the community approves a project and it receives state funds, the Communal Bank is in charge of its administration, thus materializing participatory democracy.
It is the people themselves who organize, deciding in a planned, democratic, and consensual manner how to manage the resources provided by the Venezuelan State for the benefit of all citizens of the Commune. All workers participate in the political life of their Commune.
Participatory Democracy
The basis of this system is the Assembly of Citizens, the maximum decision-making instance where the community discusses and votes on projects. Here lies the essence of direct democracy: the community discusses, modifies, and votes on projects.
Representatives are subject to an imperative mandate and are revocable, which obliges them to act in strict compliance with assembly decisions, in contrast to the representative mandate of bourgeois parliamentarism. Therefore, it represents a very important advance in terms of social democratic participation. [7]
Economic and Productive Management and National Defense
As a social financial institution, the Communal Bank is responsible for the economic-financial organization of a social nature that manages, administers, transfers, finances, facilitates, captures, and controls—in accordance with the guidelines established in the Communal Plan for the Homeland—the financial and non-financial resources of the communal scope, both returnable and non-returnable. It drives economic policies with the democratic and protagonic participation of the people, under a social, political, economic, and cultural approach for the construction of the socialist productive model. [8]
It supports productive initiatives and strengthens the local economy through a mechanism of accountability in periodic assemblies, ensuring that projects align with the real needs of the community. The Executive Council, as an organizational vanguard, is structured into commissions (Planning, Economy, Security and Peace, etc.) to sustain various productive and administrative activities.
This community autonomy, sustained by assembly practice, constitutes a rupture with the capitalist logic of production, which prioritizes private profit within a framework of mercantile anarchy. On the contrary, the communal model is oriented toward the attainment of social benefits through a democratically planned economy.
Furthermore, it constitutes a formidable barrier against internal aggressions, such as coups d’état with puppet governments, and against external and imperialist aggressions. As Commander Chávez warned, it was necessary to weave a “gigantic spiderweb” of the new to avoid being absorbed by the old system. A network of communes with its own autonomy and a conscious and organized population represents a strategic challenge for imperialism, as a people who are masters of their destiny defend their project with conviction.
A Civilizatory Project
With nearly 50,000 registered communal councils, aggregated into Communal Circuits and Communes, this model represents a significant advance in democratic participation. The voluntary union of communes at the national level is neither federalism nor bureaucratic centralism, but a form of democratic centralism where the organized people decide, plan, and manage their resources for the collective benefit, eliminating intermediaries and building an alternative territorial, social, and political base.
That is to say, the Commune is built as a revolutionary entity, as a territorial, social, and political base, and as a proletarian morality—nullifying finance capital and intermediaries to eliminate the prior indebtedness usually required to satisfy community needs.
Final Considerations
Contemporary imperialism, overwhelmed by its own internal contradictions which bring it dangerously close to a global conflict scenario (Third World War), has been unable to digest the loss of influence over much of Latin America. As a response, it has launched a counter-offensive of an openly recolonizing character.
Venezuela is in the eye of this hurricane. The siege by U.S. and European imperialism has intensified systematically through a suffocating economic blockade—a genuine measure of collective punishment against the population—which today scales toward the threat of direct military intervention.
This multifaceted aggression has severely impacted the national economy, generating food shortages and difficulties in satisfying basic material needs. Precisely, this external pressure has accelerated the need to strengthen the Communal Association, which has become a vital mechanism for the defense and self-subsistence of the people.
In this context, the Commune is not a mere administrative instrument; it is not an organ of domination and oppression of one class by another, but rather an organ of alliance of the popular classes and the seed of a new type of State. It represents the destruction of the capitalist State as an instrument of bourgeois dictatorship and its replacement by the proletariat organizing itself economically, legally, and socially, alongside the rest of the people. For this reason, it is so dangerous for it to spread internationally and for it to be taken as a model by the populations of capitalist countries.
Any attempt at military intervention will crash against the iron determination of a people who feel sovereign over their homeland.
Given this scenario, it is strategic and urgent to promote a process of communal construction that, starting from the base, permanently nurtures and dialogues with the orientation and scientific knowledge provided by the revolutionary leadership, creating a dialectical process where popular praxis and the scientific orientation of the vanguard feed back into each other in an indispensable manner.
Although its development has not been without challenges and has not reached the desired extension, it is the construction, by the working people, of a model where social property demonstrates its viability against the hegemony of private property, scientifically illuminating a path of integral emancipation.
Far from being a theoretical declaration, this is a model with proven results. I will delve deeper into this topic in a future article.
Therefore, the Commune stands as the historical form through which Venezuela announces and builds its own path toward Socialism of the 21st Century.
And now, what do we do from Spain? Let us learn, disseminate, and support this enriching experience of our Venezuelan class brothers and sisters.
Imperialist hands off Venezuela!
Long live the struggle of the working class!
Notes
[1] Hugo R. Chávez F. A Change of Course (Golpe de Timón), 10/20/2012, b:16.
[2] Amílcar Jesús Figueroa Salazar. The Commune as a Substantive Element of Socialist Transition. 2025. Caracas International Anti-Imperialist Conference.
[3] Baltic Platform. The People’s Commune—The Path to Socialism in Venezuela. 2025. Caracas International Anti-Imperialist Conference.
[4] Hugo R. Chávez F: Thesis presented for consideration at the Training Workshop, 12/07/2008.
[5] Article 21. Reform Law of the Organic Law of Communes—Extraordinary Official Gazette 6.872. Caracas, 12/30/2024.
[6] Article 22. Reform Law of the Organic Law of Communes—Extraordinary Official Gazette 6.872. Caracas, 12/30/2024.
[7] Article 56. Reform Law of the Organic Law of Communes—Extraordinary Official Gazette 6.872. Caracas, 12/30/2024.
[8] Article 4. Reform Law of the Organic Law of Communes—Extraordinary Official Gazette 6.872. Caracas, 12/30/2024.