Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project
Chris Gilbert, Monthly Review Press, £19.99

TOWARDS the end of his life, Venezuela’s charismatic president, Hugo Chavez, devoted much attention to establishing and promoting communes as a grassroots form of socialism. With his death and the imposition of vicious US sanctions along with attempts to destabilise the Bolivarian government, the commune movement lost impetus.

While so many of us view the building of socialism as the only solution if humankind is to survive, the key question is how to bring that about. In most countries the idea of a successful socialist insurrection as per the Bolshevik model, a successful coup, or through parliamentary legislation are hardly feasible or realistic options.

Gilbert here argues that a commune movement, as envisaged by Chavez, does offer us a way forward towards the building of socialism in Venezuela and more widely. We can find inspiration for this in past history, at a time when land and even production facilities were held in common and/or served the community rather than being subject to outside capitalist dictates.