Recently the podcast Cosmonaut hosted Chris Gilbert for a discussion on his new book Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project. They covered the history of the Venezuelan communal project, and how it relates to previous attempts of the government to build a socialist economy — including the Venezuelan cooperative movement or the drive to build state-run industry. They discussed the ideas of István Mészáros on how the commune centers the communal control of the labor process, and attempts to solve problems found during the socialist transition, before pivoting to ground data on the communes, the economic relationships between them and towards the outside, the issues with voluntarism, the problem of attracting the youth and the structure of the new Communard Union. And they finished the discussion with an outlook for the future and a discussion on how communes center all around human development and have a more mystical side to them.
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