Caracas, December 8, 2022 (Press MinComunas) – This Thursday, in the spaces of the Venezuelan School of Planning, located in Caracas, the National Meeting of Communal Economy was installed, which will take place on December 8, 9, and 10.
At the “Commune, economy and life” inaugural forum, the Vice Minister of Communal Economy of the People’s Ministry for Communes and Social Movements, Hernan Vargas, explained how this space would enable to take stock and establish challenges for the construction of an economy for life.
“Firstly, today, we want to fulfill and renew the mandate of Commander Hugo Chavez regarding the construction of Communes and Socialism. Secondly, as directed by President Nicolas Maduro, we must advance in a new epoch of transition to socialism from the People’s Power. Finally, through this debate, we seek to understand that the Commune is the alternative to the Bolivarian Revolution to build a commune economy for life that replaces the rentier economy.”
Similarly, Veronica Gago, coordinator of the working group of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences Popular Economies of Argentina, highlighted via telematics the importance of discussing popular economies, mapping their histories, and analyzing the modalities of wage labor.
“We must understand the decline of salaried work is constant and progressive. We must mark as a strategic point the dynamics of popular economies, which confront the exclusion forms of means and resources for the social reproduction of a large part of the population.”
Communal projects are born through self-management
Morelis Malvacias Gil, Sectores Unidos Commune spokeswoman in Lara State, Venezuela, explained how organized in blocks of Communes, in Communal Councils, the families live, dress and feed themselves all year round from the cultivation and coffee sacks sale.
“Eight Communes in Villanueva parish managed to create their own Communal Economic Coffee Circuit through self-management, and also to put into operation an agroecological school, acquire an electric power plant and buy an ambulance,” he mentioned.
In his presentation, he detailed that they continue fighting to identify the critical points of the territory and to achieve that the coffee growers get paid a fair price for their work and that the intermediaries and the big producers do not continue taking the big profits.
How can we change the economy?
Katya Colmenares, a researcher from Mexico, reflected on capitalism, highlighting that “capitalist logic is constitutive of modern society, which means that the capitalist system is the economic correlate of modern society.
He stated that transforming the economy also requires changing the human beings’ way relate to each other.
The economy for life is only possible collectively.
During his speech, the People’s Minister for Communes and Social Movements, Jorge Arreaza, pointed out that the economy for life is only possible as a collective. Hence the importance of rescuing the assembly character to create viable projects that respond to the most felt needs of the population.
“We have to incorporate young people into a new method of the economy for life, where the people’s power, not capitalism, builds the big projects. Our young people must be empowered and assume the functioning of the circuit and all commune processes,” he stressed.
Minister Arreaza reiterated that the Communal City is not a utopia and that progress is underway in the socialism development. “The new revolutionary society must start from several infallible principles. The first one is that everything we do is for life. Second, we use the assembly method, so everyone plans and participates in the commune projects. Finally, that everything we do is feasible”, he oriented.
The National Meeting of Communal Economy is held under the motto “balance and challenges in the construction of an economy for life.”
