Caracas, September 12, 2023 (Press Mincomunas) – This Tuesday, as part of the program of the 14th Caracas Book Fair, the book “Balance and Challenges in the Construction of an Economy for Life” was christened, which is an effort to systematize the presentations of a national meeting held in December 2022.
The christening took place at the Municipal Palace of Caracas, presided over by the People’s Power Minister for Communes and Social Movements, Jorge Arreaza; the Vice Minister of Communal Economy, Hernan Vargas, and the coffee grower of Lara State, Morelys Malvacias, along with the people attending the event.
During his speech, Arreaza celebrated reaching expectations producers had regarding the Communal Economic Circuits idea more than a year ago. Because “they are freeing themselves from intermediaries, from the determined fertilizer, from bureaucracy, from their selfishness.”
Concerning the book, he stressed the significance of systematizing everything done, especially the People’s Power progress in the economic field, which is the great challenge of any socialist project.
“Now we are going for 60 circuits. If they are trained by those with experience this book would be part of the training. The learning curve will be much shorter. They will already know where not to stumble or fall,” said the Minister.
In his introduction to the book, Vice Minister Vargas emphasized the modest contribution to Territorial Socialism construction, where the Commune is the central axis for grouping the People’s Power force.
He contextualized that last year, there was an intense spokespersons’ renewal process of Communal Councils, reactivation of assemblies, and creation of new working committees in Communal Councils. Then, it triggered the articulation in the territories of spaces of the Cabinet of Communal Government, where the newly elected committees met with the heads of the mayors’ offices, governors’ offices, and ministries to give shape to the system of popular government.
He pointed out that 2022 was a crucial year in terms of achieving progress in a significant challenge in the territorial socialism construction, namely what they call Economy for Life, a new way of planning and producing life in each one of the communal territories.
Vargas recalled that at the end of last year, there was a national meeting with the participation of spokespersons of Communal Councils, Communes, cooperatives, family production units, and socially-owned enterprises that have been promoting the organization of aggregation systems in the territory, named Communal Economic Circuits, where basically three things happen: several Communes join together to collectivize the economic processes, they begin to build alternative productive chains and to define a model of economy for life.
He further explained that the Economy for Life centers on three fundamental factors, such as enabling the producing families in each of the Communes to sustain production permanently without the need to get into debt, guaranteeing these families the basics they need (food, clothing) and that they can contribute to the communities where they are to the community basics: education, health, services, housing.
Morelys Malvacias, a representative of the Economic Communal Coffee Circuit, peasant and communal spokeswoman of the highlands of Moran municipality in Lara state, expressed that “we cannot do anything alone. We have to unite in Communal Councils and Communes and form the circuits. We have demonstrated through our work that it is possible to organize ourselves for the communal economy, for collective life. We must learn by realizing that the productive chain is not only about production and handing over the crops to the intermediary, but we must take ownership of the whole chain so that these resources return to the communities”.
She added that the circuits are interlinked work with the institutions of the other levels of government, which guarantee producers a better price for their products. She also spoke excitedly about an experience with the Communal Baskets’ routes throughout the country.
