‘The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis’ provides the historical insight that I associate with the best accounts of this kind: motives are complex, power a critical variable, timing an unpredictable factor, and rational argument not necessarily a winning strategy… | more…
Stone, as always working from open-source materials, condemned the continuation of the bombing of the north even though there were no viable military targets left…These days, the Stone’s ‘Hidden History,’ while still viewed with hostility in certain quarters, is regarded as one of his best works. But given that it appeared long before the archives were open and while the conflict in Korea continued, is there merit in republishing it? The answer is yes. Stone may not have got everything right, and occasionally lapses into conspiracy theories, but his broad picture was accurate enough at the time and remains so. It is a lasting tribute to meticulous journalism. | more…
Protests against enclosure began as far back as 1450, when “tens of thousands of English peasants fought, and thousands died, to halt the spread of capitalist farming that was destroying their way of life.” | more…
The “what” of this program is socialist and the “how” is revolutionary, arguing for the elevation of working people as a new ruling class dedicated to the end of exploitation, expropriation, special oppressions, environmental degradation, and work itself… | more…
I was asked to write this essay in response to the plea for grief and recognition of Palestinian traumas in the pages of this magazine, beautifully written by the Palestinian journalist Mohammed R. Mhawish, who is now being personally targeted by the Israeli government, along with his family. I admittedly tremble at the responsibility involved in that request… | more…
….devised two centuries before Marx’s concept of communism as “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” Winstanley’s ideas bore significant resemblances to the latter’s ideas, although Marx could not have known of Winstanley as the Diggers’ ideas were ruthlessly stamped out and were only re-discovered late in the 19th century… | more…
The UAW strike against Big Auto succeeded in winning impressive wage gains, but it failed to obtain a little-reported demand: that the auto companies reinstate defined benefit pension plans for new employees… | more…
Recently the podcast Cosmonaut hosted Chris Gilbert for a discussion of his new book ‘Commune or Nothing!’ They covered topics such as: The history of communes, the Venezuelan cooperative movement and the drive to build state-run industry; István Mészáros’ perspective on how the commune centers the communal control of the labor process; the problem of attracting the youth to communes today; the mystical side of communes in relation to human development, and more… | more…
Already in the early 1980s if not before: “It was clear to most of us that socialism couldn’t survive without radical democratisation … it had to be based on consent.” Nevertheless, for Sheehan as for many of us on the left, the demise of the socialist bloc represented a defeat and the restoration of capitalism. It was “the most dramatic upheaval, politically and psychologically,” Sheehan says. | more…
The book ends with a broad literature review on our possible postcapitalist future by Greg Albo. This concluding chapter and the rest of the book offer the reader hope to overcome the contemporary crisis and meet a healthier and happier future | more…
Listen to Chris Gilbert, author of ‘Commune or Nothing!’ as he details how Venezuela’s communards have plowed ahead with the construction of socialism even under the most difficult circumstances. | more…
So why not just end the U.S. embargo on Venezuela? If Venezuelans are coming here just to escape economic problems at home, reducing the embargo should bring about a major decline in Venezuelan asylum seekers. | more…
Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project
by Chris Gilbert
$23.00 / 208 pages / 978-1-68590-023-6
Author’s Note
Karl Marx wrote that theory becomes a material force when it grips the masses. He should have added that theory usually grips the masses because it connects with ideas, projects, and dreams they have developed themselves. This is what generally happens in revolutions, and it is certainly the case for the idea of the communal project in Venezuela.
In 2009, ten years after the Bolivarian Process began, Hugo Chávez proposed the communal path to socialism in a historic television program. That project had solid bases in the thought of Marx and István Mészáros, yet it would have been dead in the water if the idea of replacing a society dominated by the logic of capital with one based on communal relations had not connected with aspirations and values already alive and operating in Venezuelan society.
As it turned out, self-organized communities around the country seized on the communal project, which resonated both with values shaped over the longue durée in Venezuela—through its enduring campesino, Indigenous, and Afro-Venezuelan traditions of self-governance | more…