Caracas, August 28, 2022 (Press MinComunas) – On Sunday, Deputy Minister of Communal Economy, Hernan Vargas, participated, via telematic, in the formative block closing “Tools and experiences of the class struggle.” The North to South School of Mexico developed this experience to analyze the Venezuelan artist and illustrator Felipe Garcia’s booklet “El Arte de Ponernos de Acuerdo.”
The activity was organized by the National Institute of Political Formation and the National Network of Study Circles (Renace) from the Aztec nation.
In his approach to the work, the high official of the People’s Power Ministry for the Communes and Social Movements considered it a pedagogical tool that favors collective, community construction. It invites to listen to the people as a principle of politics, in a dynamic where everyone feels they can participate. It also promotes having a method, reaching agreements, and complying with them. “Those who assume leadership or spokesperson roles have to remain tied to the collective mandate, to advance at the rhythm of what the people are proposing,” he said.
He indicated that “The Art of Agreeing” follows the tradition of different Latin American theoreticians, such as the masters Enrique Dussel and Hernan Peralta. “It provides left-wing militants materials to work in terms of how to do a methodology for the collective analysis of the practice.”
“We are, interpellated and self-interpellated lefts in this logic of how to read Marxism and learn from it, but also rethink it in our logics, decolonize it and make it communal. Our Marxism has to be necessarily communitarian. That is why we have been talking lately about communal socialism. President Maduro speaks of Indo-African communal socialism”, highlighted the Vice Minister during his participation.
He also emphasized that “The Art of Agreeing” has to do with an era where after the neoliberal night, one resumes the idea of looking at the dawn. The dawn (in allusion to the regional integration block) and, in America, one begins to see politics as a field of possibilities and retake the spaces of open political discussion. He stressed the importance of rescuing politics from below, from the people.
The author of the booklet, Felipe Garcia, shared that his experiences in the slums of Caracas allowed him to gather the knowledge he captured in “The Art of Agreeing.” He quoted, “As Lenin used to say, ‘one must be in the right place where one can contribute to the Revolution,” and he also commented that the best contributions are where he has felt more at ease, kicking the streets in the communities, making murals. Where a real people’s party live while painting, a sharing with the whole neighborhood incorporated.
