Caracas, August 30, 2023. Press Mincomunas – This Wednesday, Elvis Gonzalez Gutierrez, professor of the Bolivarian University of Venezuela and advisor of the Bolivarian University of the Communes, assured that the communal political economy must point towards another spirituality, one that focuses on sharing with the other, the construction of common welfare and in the care of life.
“In modernity, the economy became a pattern of knowledge that destroys community and maximizes profit by turning things into merchandise to accumulate capital, and this is not life. The communal economy is antagonistic to capitalism. The community is based on life, with respect for Mother Earth. Life would be the raison d’être of the communal political economy. The communal political economy’s criterion is to reproduce life. Sharing comes from the family; the mother, the father, and the grandparents are the ones who cultivate sharing, and this has to be reflected in the community, and from there, it expands to the different instances and communal organizations”, he said.
During his participation in the “En Clave Comunal” radio program, broadcast by Radio Nacional de Venezuela, researcher Elvis Gonzalez said that there is a governmental communal economic policy in Venezuela expressed in circuits and zones of community economy, as well as in the formation of alternative chains of value generation. However, he clarified that there is an articulation of other peoples’ power expressions in the territories that arose in the face of the crisis to satisfy the community’s needs, and that has strengthened with the recently enacted organic laws.
“In the community economy, the community takes the best, and the surplus goes to the local market; but a problem arises to which market, because, if we take it to a capitalist market, we expose ourselves to capitalist competition, which is unfair, monopolistic, selfish, individualistic, and that is where the community must fight and look for spaces that do not reproduce the values of capitalism and generate collective welfare. It is necessary to incorporate a true sense of community, a new spirituality for the communal economic policy undertaken by the Ministry of Communes. It is the first aspect that must be reviewed, trained, and worked from the community, in the schools, to overcome the values of modernity”, he expressed.
Similarly, the specialist Elvis Gonzalez added that building a new civilizational model to transcend modernity requires taking up again the communitarian path.
“We have believed that socialism is about dominating or controlling others. No, that is not the way! Sharing in a community is not done by dominating. It starts with love, dedication, and solidarity only. If it is not with these values, then it is not communitarian. It starts with service vocation but without expecting anything in return. We must work on the vocation of service. It starts with the children and adolescents in the communities. We must influence the education they are receiving at all levels so that we have Bolivarian socialism as a new civilizing model, where the commune is the subject of the transformation of the nation. The communal political economy is not in a single community. It is in the whole country making communes”, he pointed out.
Economist Elvis Gonzalez insisted that the category of “development,” imposed by this modern civilization system, which is the cause of doing irrational things that threaten life on the planet, must be erased.
“The ‘development’ leads us to produce things that nobody needs through the systematic destruction of the environment. When we think in balance, we produce what we need to satisfy the need. When we reach equilibrium, one enjoys that production without threatening life,” he added.
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