Ideas and practices of communal self-administration are widespread in Latin America, especially among indigenous and Afro-American com-munities, stemming from ancestral customs. Commune-like self-admin-istration predates the Paris Commune and has surfaced repeatedly throughout history. It was present in the wars of independence, in peasant uprisings, in revolts and revolutions in the early 20th century and in the struggles of its second half. The idea of the commune as democratically self-governed space corresponds to the framework of alternative imagination of many popular movements and the experi-ences of building popular power. Socialism based on local self-govern-ment instead of being state-centred irrupted again the international leftist imaginary with the Zapatista uprising in 1994. Similar practices became visible or developed also in many other parts of Latin America. The practice of political organization as a horizontal confedera-tion of communities in the 21st century, is linked to indigenous and Afro-American experiences, and to the communitarian socialist tradition that was hegemonic prior to the appearance of State socialism. Pointing at socialism’s original “communitarian impetus” before it became “col-lectivism, bureaucracy and self-destruction,” Gustavo Esteva (2009): “Communities appear as an alternative because the unity between poli-tics and place is restored, and the pueblo acquires a framework in which it can exercise its power, without having to surrender it to the State.”
Self-administration structures in Latin America usually practice or aim at the collective democratic control over the means of production, which they deem necessary to develop autonomous self-government. Moreover, the deep economic crises during the past almost three decades have led to hundreds of workers’ takeovers, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela, to produce under workers’ control, exposing characteristics strongly resembling the workers councils of the early 20th century. Most of the successful Worker-Recuperated Companies (WRC)1 have strong ties with nearby communities (Azzellini 2017; Rieiro 2015; Vieta 2020). Assigning a central role to the productive dimension of the local self-administration and aiming at a collective and democratic control of the means of pro-duction is one of the fundamental differences compared to contempor-ary practices of municipalism or communalism which limit the collective democratic self-administration to the political sphere.
To overcome the separation of the economic, social and political sphere is the very essence of council democracy (Demirovic 2015). Marx stated that the Commune “was essentially a working-class gov-ernment … the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour” (Marx 1871, 334). Workers’ control was an essential element in the Paris Commune, and already in the 1860s, there were uprisings in several French cities that led to the proclamation of communes in Lyon, Marseille and other cities. In Le Creusot, one of the biggest industrial centres of France, the industrial workers taking control of the production were the main pilar of the commune (Hartmann and Wimmer 2021).
In various of the councilist contexts in Latin America the actors studied and study other practices of council democracy and also refer to prior experiences. However, this does not mean that similar practices in different regions, contexts and times, are all stem-ming from prior practices. Most are organically developed without any (detailed) knowledge about other councilist practices. Before I delve into exploring different examples, it is necessary to define what kind of practices we can consider to be part of a councilist repertoire.
The councilist repertoire of democratic self-administration
In the following, I define the main characteristics of council democracy based on the Paris Commune and the workers’ councils of the early 20th century. Considering that today’s context is different than 100–150 years ago, the list does not represent a strict blueprint to follow. It is a repertoire of practices that nourish council democracy, without the necessity to fulfil them all.
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Participation is open to everyone and not organized along pre-established groups or parties. Participation in the Paris Commune was not orga-nized along pre-existing political orientations (although they influ-enced the positions taken), but was open to every individual. The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and later Communist Party of Germany (KPD) cadre Ernst Däumig, who had been a leading activist in the Berlin council movement, stated that because the aim of the workers’ councils was to free the whole proletariat from capitalist exploitation, the councils could not be controlled by a certain party or profession, but had to encompass the proletariat as a whole (Däumig 1973, 81). The “totality of the collaborative workers” (Pannekoek 2008, 40) should participate in councils and in decision- making.
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Non-representational democracy and immediate accountability. Elected delegates are considered carriers of the assembly’s decisions and will but have no power to make decisions on their own (Pannekoek 2008, 40). They do not represent. Their duties are performed publicly and they are immediately accountable for their actions. The assem-bly that elected them, can recall them at any time. “Democracy is therefore a matter of creating the socio-political conditions that impede the development of political power” (Demirovic 2015, 45). At the workplace, the highest authority is the workers’ council: the general assembly of all workers. At workplaces with a huge number of workers, departmental assemblies are constituted, which send delegates to a central delegate assembly or committee. The delegates transmit departmental decisions to the delegate assembly and carry back matters to be discussed in the department.
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Challenging the division of the economic, the political and the social into autonomous spheres. The construction of the economic, the political and the social as distinct and autonomous spheres as in liberal think-ing, is foundational to capitalism and the bourgeois state: It limits democracy to the “political sphere” and justifies the existence of governed and governors. Council democracy implicitly questions this separation, as it also challenges the social division of labour. To over-come the split between the social and the political means to over-come the difference between civil society and political society. In council democracy, there is no political body that makes decisions detached from society. Democracy is no longer limited to a political regime and becomes a principle determining every sphere of life.
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No separation of legislative power from executive power. The Paris Commune and the later councilists rejected the separation of powers. The Commune “was to be a working, not a parliamentary body” (Marx 1986a, 537). The Commune’s elected committees had legislative and executive functions. The judiciary was separated, but it was also elected, accountable and recallable at any time. The separation of powers was considered “as a principle harmful to democracy” which “had to be overcome” (Adler 1981, 206). In line with Rousseau the councilists argued that the separation of powers is not compatible with the sovereignty of the people. If con-stituent power is the source of legitimacy of constituted power and resides in the sovereign, the people, it can hardly be justified to sep-arate legislative power from executive power.2
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Socialisation. Neither private nor state-owned. The council commu-nists did not demand nationalisation under state control of the means of production, but their socialisation: “the masses of workers themselves will receive the administration of their places to work, or at least will receive the decisive part of the control of his administration” (Korsch 1977, 22–23). The different production sites would coordinate to plan production to satisfy social needs, but they do not own the means of production, “they do not belong to any individual group of workers but to the combined community of all single groups” (Korsch 1980, 90). The goal is to build “a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is con-sciously applied as the combined labour power of the community” (Marx 1967, 82–83). As Korsch pointed out this would not happen by decree, but as the result of an ongoing class struggle.
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Neither State nor government but peoples’ control. For Marx the Paris Commune
was a Revolution against the State itself, this supernaturalist abortion of society, a resumption by the people for the people, of its own social life. It was not a revolution to transfer it from one fraction of the ruling classes to the other, but a Revolution to break down this horrid machinery of Class dom-ination itself … . The Commune – the reabsorption of the State power by society, as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves, forming their own force instead of the organized force of their suppression – the political force of their social eman-cipation. (Marx 1986b, 486–87)
The Communards were “displacing the State machinery, the gov-ernmental machinery of the ruling classes by a governmental machinery of their own” (Marx 1986b, 498). But Marx did not elaborate a theory of the state and did not explain what he exactly understood by the term, “government.” The Commune replaced the standing army with a popular militia and police functions with civil engagement. The “whole initiative hitherto exercised by the State was laid into the hands of the Commune” (Marx 1986c, 331). Until the defeat of the revo-lutionary movements in Europe the communist movements were not oriented towards the nation-state. The Communes in Paris and other parts of France aimed at building a national Federation of Communes. The council communists differentiated between the existing “bour-geoise state” and the “proletarian state” meant to replace it (Korsch 1968). But they did not elaborate a theory of government or the state. They often used the term “self-government,” but did not see the coun-cils as a “government,” which for them was linked to the false political democracy: “The councils are no politicians, no government. They are messengers” (Pannekoek 2003, 45). The government’s main function was to uphold class domination. When the necessity to do this vanishes, government disappears too, and “[w]hat remains is administration” (Pannekoek 2003, 48–49).
From today’s state of the art, the form of administration emerging out of council democracy would be considered neither government nor a state. Council democracy challenges the division into different spheres the state is based on, and therefore it also challenges, by exten-sion, the state (Demirovic 2015, 34). The Commune eliminated what are considered the central features of the state and council democracy elim-inates also several central functions of government, it is therefore neither state nor government.
Historical approaches and practices
Communal or communitarian socialism based on local self-govern-ment has also been theorized by several Latin American thinkers. They were influenced by Marxism, Socialism and Anarchism and often draw a direct line to the customs of indigenous people and the legacy of maroon communities of self-liberated formerly enslaved Africans.
The Venezuelan philosopher and educator Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), teacher of Simón Bolívar and central reference of Bolivar-ianism, proposed in 1847 a form of local self-government he called toparchy (from the Greek term “topos,” place). Rodríguez had fre-quented utopian socialists in France in the early 19th century. He pro-posed, the government should be formed by a confederation of self-governed communities, in which the power of the church, the rich and the military had been abolished. He considered direct local govern-ment as the only effective measure against despotism (Rodríguez 2001, 542). The confederation of communes was also the idea the Paris Commune opposed to the centralized nation-state. In his analysis of the revolutionary socialist administration of the Paris Commune, Marx stated the Capitalist system can be superseded “if united co-oper-ative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under their own control,” and as Marx sums up, “what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, ‘possible’ Com-munism?” (Marx 1871, 335).
The collective and communitarian modes of production and of orga-nizing of indigenous communities throughout the Americas also raised interest among some Latin American intellectuals, socialists and Marx-ists in the 20th century. Among them was the Mexican anarchist and revolutionary syndicalist Ricardo Flores Magón (1874–1922), whose movement was involved in strikes and uprisings in 1906–1907. He is considered a precursor of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Magón was arrested by the US government and died in prison in 1922. Flores Magón’s movement promoted a radical agrarian reform and democratic self-government of the rural and indigenous communities, which he considered ready for communism (Flores Magón 1911). In the South-Western Mexican state of Oaxaca, where Flores Magón was born, “Magonism” is still a significant reference. Flores Magón coined the slogan “Land and Freedom,” adopted later on by Emiliano Zapata.
Local self-government against the despotic rule of the “hacien-deros” exploiting the poor rural and indigenous population, was also present in the Mexican revolution. After Emiliano Zapata’s Liberation Army of the South and Pancho Villa’s Northern Division defeated the government’s troops, they left Mexico City in December 1914. Zapata and the most radical factions of Zapatismo concentrated in Morelos (mainly around Cuernavaca) and united workers and peasants. Fol-lowing a radical agrarian reform, the Zapatistas of Morelos had started a practice of communal collective self-government in the towns of the region aiming at an egalitarian society. While for the pea-sants the agrarian reform brought forward by the Zapatistas was central, for the workers it was the Zapatista proposal to nationalize the sugar mills (Bosteels 2014, 174).
Basing themselves on old traditions and the practice of collectively discussing community problems, the Zapatists created forms of organization and government not unlike the soviets the Russian Revolution was then reviving on the other side of the world. (Gilly 2006, 271)
The communal democracy experiment lasted approximately one year, until October 1915, when the Zapatistas lost power (Bosteels 2014).
Communitarian socialism is also connected with currents of Latin American Marxist thought, such as that of the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930), a supporter of an original Latin American socialism and a transition towards it, rooted in collective indigenous practices.
Mariátegui observed that even under the most extreme oppression, indigenous communities in Peru represented a “natural factor of socia-lization of the land” and preserved many elements of their communal and cooperative organization. Even when the land was fragmented into small individually owned properties, the indigenous people would keep up all modes of collective and cooperative work. Mariáte-gui opposed the idea that indigenous communities were based on abstract principles of law or sentimental traditionalism. For him, indi-genous communities are concrete forms of social and economic organ-ization based on collectivity. Mariátegui rejected the characterization of the indigenous economy as primitive according to the stages of devel-opment by Marx and Engels, that would be gradually displaced by a more modern economy. He argued the social and economic organiz-ation of the indigenous people is superior to the semi-feudal latifun-dium that is not capable of advancing technologically. He was convinced of the potential of indigenous people to build socialism in countries with an indigenous majority (Mariátegui 2010).
Communitarian and democratic practices existed also in commu-nities founded by self-liberated former African slaves throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. Because of the ongoing threats of being recaptured they constructed fortified settlements in remote areas, partly merging with local indigenous people. The settlements are known as maroon towns (Caribbean), quilombos (Brazil), palenques (Colombia and Cuba) or cumbes (Venezuela). Their practices are far less known than those of indigenous people. Usually only the black population living in these areas refers to those communitarian tra-ditions, such as the Afro-Venezuelans living in the region of Barlovento who call their communes, “cumbes.”
Contemporary practices of council democracy
Practices in line with the main principles of the councilist reper-toire can be found all over Latin America. Regarding communal self-administration, they are mainly situated in indigenous contexts. The Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico, are the best known and best documented case of local self-administration in line with many principles of council democracy. Their example led to the proclamation of self-administered communities in other Mexican states, mainly in Oaxaca and Guerrero. Although specifics might differ from case to case, organizational practices sharing principles of council democracy exist in indigenous regions throughout Ecuador; in the form of commu-nal organization of the inhabitants of the indigenous metropolis El Alto in Bolivia; in the “settlements” of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST); in the struggles and the neighbourhoods built by the piqueteros, the unemployed workers movements in Argentina; in the self-con-structed neighbourhoods of the Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha (MPL) in Chile; in Communal Councils and Communes in Venezuela; and in hundreds of worker recuperated companies, mainly in Argen-tina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela. I will focus on the Mexican and the Venezuelan examples of self-administration.
Mexico: the autonomous self-administration of the Zapatistas
The 1994 Zapatista uprising led to the creation of autonomous communal self-government structures in a consistent part of the Chiapas territory, which have suffered military and paramilitary har-assment. In addition to its indigenous background, the EZLN is also influenced by social revolutionary currents as Zapatismo, Magonismo, autonomous Marxism and anarchism.
The Zapatistas started building their structures of self-adminis-tration many years before 1994 and continued developing them. At the end of 2023 they announced a change of the structure. Originally, the self-administration was based in community assemblies encom-passing some 300 households. Several community assemblies in a self-defined territory built a Rebellious Autonomous Zapatista Municipal-ity (MAREZ in Spanish). The communities within a MAREZ coordinated with each other, as did the MAREZ. At the top there were the Caracoles, which could encompass several MAREZ or communities and offered space for mass gatherings. The Caracoles functioned as headquarters of the twelve regional self-governments, the Juntas of Good Government (JBG). The JBGs had different commissions to plan for specific areas such as production, education, health, etc., and coordinate between the MAREZ and the communities. Until 2004 the Zapatistas had created 27 MAREZ and five Caracoles. In 2019 they announced a significant expansion with seven new caracoles and five additional MAREZ (Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, 2019).
The Zapatistas have built their own healthcare system with hospi-tals and health posts, as well as an education system with hundreds of schools. They developed an alternative justice system managed by the assemblies, and a network of community radio stations. The Zapatista economy is mainly agrarian (and ecological and organic) and based on cooperatives, family production, and community administered stores and businesses (such as tortillerías). Small individual and family land property is allowed as well as small businesses. Then there is collective land, which was assigned to the communities after the uprising and is worked collectively for the benefit of the collective. The gains are used to finance the common structures as healthcare system, schools, and the support of Zapatista authorities. All remaining land was declared common land that does not belong to anyone and is administered by the Zapatista structures. Anyone can ask to use a part for individual or family agriculture. The land can generally not be sold or given away (EZLN 2016; 2023a; 2023b; Vergara-Camus 2014).
In the new structure the main base of the autonomy and decision making are the Local Autonomous Governments (GAL), which are formed where the Zapatista support base live. They respond to the assembly of their territory, which also elects agents and commissioners that take over the coordination and tasks. The GAL is in charge of the territory’s health and educational infrastructure as schools and clinics, relationships with nearby non-Zapatista communities, controls finances and investigates mismanagement, corruption and other pro-blems. The capacity to self-govern has been transferred from the MAREZ to the lowest level of self-organization. Various GALs build a Collective of Zapatista Autonomous Government (CGAZ). Every GAL has various work areas corresponding to the interests of the con-vening communities, as can be health, education, agroecology, justice, commerce, etc. Each area has an elected coordinator in charge of making the communities’ requests work (for example vaccination cam-paigns). The attributes formerly assigned to the twelve JBG were trans-ferred to hundreds of CGAZ at a lower level. The highest level of coordination is the Assembly of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments (ACZAG). The ACZAG are based in the twelve Cara-coles but move to the towns and communities that ask for attention. As the CGAZ, they depend on and are accountable to the GALs and the community assemblies (EZLN 2023a).
Both structures and practices overlap strongly with the council democracy characteristics identified earlier. In Zapatista territories all Zapatista support base older than twelve years of age has the right to speak and the right to vote in the assemblies. The old and the new structures function on all levels based on direct democracy, and elect at all levels spokespeople for the next level, that do not have decision making power. The decision-making mechanism at all levels are the assemblies. All assemblies try to reach consensual decisions. All decisions, initiatives and policies at higher levels have to be confirmed by the local assemblies. The division into an economic, a political and a social sphere is rejected. Like in the Paris Commune, the assemblies and elected committees are “working bodies,” with legislative and executive functions.
Mexico, Oaxaca: autonomous communities and the Oaxaca commune
The state of Oaxaca, with its mostly indigenous population has a strong tradition of self-administration in rural indigenous commu-nities. In no other Mexican state are there so many communities that elect their authorities according to uses and customs, as permitted by law in Oaxaca. Many of those communities are based on mechanisms of communal democracy, and some proclaimed themselves auton-omous from the state and its representative political structures. The communities of the highlands of Oaxaca developed the doctrine of communality (comunalidad), with the following principles: “1] participatory or direct democracy; 2] the organization of community work; 3] com-munity territorial possession and control; 4] a common worldview that includes the notion of the Earth as mother (Pachamama) and respect for community leadership” (Barkin and Lemus 2020, 350). Orig-inally the doctrine arose in defence of natural resources in territories affected by forest clearing and other extractive activities. So, it is “a direct challenge to the idea of nation-state sovereignty” (Barkin and Lemus 2020, 352). The doctrine is in line with the basic characteristics of council democracy identified earlier and incudes prominently the collective administration of the means of production in order to develop an effective autonomy.
The city of Oaxaca, the capital of the state of Oaxaca, experienced the first longer lasting urban commune of the 21st century, when the brutal police eviction of a protest camp of a teachers’ union on 14 June 2006 turned into a general uprising. The police and city adminis-tration abandoned the 600,000 inhabitants’ city, which was protected by thousands of barricades set up by the people. Until the storming by special police units at the end of October, everyday life and political actions were organized by the people themselves through neighbour-hood assemblies, thematic committees and as highest body the newly founded Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). The
APPO was a coordination of spokespeople from over 300 political and social organizations and groups of farm workers, students, indigenous people and neighbourhoods. The APPO was partly convened by spokespeople of organizations. General participation was possible and effective through neighbourhood assemblies constituted during the struggle, in which participation was individual. The reference to indigenous practices was a significant element in the “Oaxaca commune” (as it named itself), although the majority of the city’s popu-lation is not indigenous (Arenas 2014; Beas Torres 2007; Esteva 2009; 2010).
Guerrero, Mexico: local self-administration starting from communitarian police
In the south-western state of Guerrero self-administration emerged from the construction of a community police. On October 15, 1995, spokespeople of 34 indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities and six social organizations of southern Guerrero, the Costa Chica region and the mountains in the interior, agreed on building the Regional Coordination of Community Authorities – Community Police (CRAC–PC).
Guerrero is one of the poorest states in Mexico, and many Indigen-ous people only speak their own language. In part due to the absence of the Mexican government in the most vulnerable areas of Guerrero, and having long suffered the effects of colonialism, many rural Guerrerans have little access to formal schooling. More than a quarter of the popu-lation of Guerrero earns less than three euros a day. Indigenous pea-sants are also at the mercy of the caciques and their armed troops, the Guardias Blancas.3 Before the CRAC–PC was established the state of Guerrero used to also be one of the most violent in the country. The most remote areas had been plagued for decades by rising crime from drug trafficking organizations and criminal gangs. Inhabitants of the communities were frequently assaulted on their way to local and regional markets and coming back, and the communities, suffered harassment from the military and the police. Most of the remote com-munities where the CRAC–PC is present are Indigenous – mainly Mixtec, Tlapanec, and Nahua – as well as Afro-Mexican and mestizo. They have had an express need to centre local protection with local people that respect Indigenous and autochthonous customs.
The CRAC–PC officers are elected directly by the communities and are only able to serve for a limited time. They do not receive a salary. They are supported by the communities and are accountable to them. At first, they handed the arrested criminals over to the regular police outside their territories. But after a while they realized that the offen-ders were either released or, in case of imprisonment, they became even more criminal. The self-administered CRAC communities estab-lished a community justice system. Minor offenses are judged by the members of the local community assembly, more serious offenses by the regional coordination CRAC. The people arrested by the CRAC-PC can choose between going on trial in the communities or being handed over to the Mexican police. Almost all choose the communities. The penal system installed by the CRAC aims at re-socialization. Those found guilty are imprisoned at night, while during the day they work on community projects. Once the prisoners are released, they are offered a piece of land and can choose to stay in a community (Cal-veiro, 2021; Gasparello, 2009; Gasparello and Guerrero, 2009).
At its beginning, in the 1990s, CRAC–PC areas collectively had approximately 100,000 inhabitants. In only a few years the crime rate in the region controlled by the communities decreased 95 percent. This was achieved by just 600 women and men serving as community police officers, armed only with small-calibre rifles and without any sophisticated technology or even patrol cars. By 2022 the CRAC–PC had extended its police and penal system to 215 communities in Guer-rero (Mendoza Bautista 2019; Tlachinollan 2022).
Furthering the development of self-administration, the CRAC communities coordinate much of their local economies, such as agricul-tural production, and have built a network of community radio stations. The CRAC system of self-administration is based on local assemblies and elected spokespeople participate in coordinating bodies. Until the early 2000s more and more communities were joining the CRAC–PC. For the communities it is clear that the CRAC–PC is deeply connected to their struggle for autonomy and self-governance. When the CRAC–PC was told by the Mexican auth-orities that it would be illegal to set up a community police, it responded to the authorities that they were not asking for permission. Rather, they were just informing the authorities about what the people had already decided in their assembly. Moreover, the communities also decided that the army and the police were no longer allowed to enter their territories without prior permission.
Although the state law allows the indigenous communities to organize their communities and life according to “uses and customs,” the CRAC clarifies that not all uses and customs are accepta-ble. The strong focus on human rights and women’s rights led the CRAC to include to their new rules and standard in early 2023 the pro-hibition of forced marriages or “sales” of children brides after having become aware of such cases in some remote communities. Commu-nities involved in such practices will be expelled from the CRAC (Briseño 2023). The organization of women and the struggle for women’s rights is a strong and important issue among the commu-nities. Women hold assemblies on their rights in regional centres with the participation of hundreds of women. The speakers are usually women from other communities that have assumed responsi-bility in the system of self-administration.
Almost 90 percent of the region’s population makes a living from growing coffee, but monoculture has had negative consequences at times for the peasant farmers. In some years the coffee farmers have received such little compensation from their crops that the coffee has gone unharvested. In order to escape the miseries brought on by world markets, the regional assembly founded the Regional Communi-tarian Organization (OCR), with the task to build a regional self-suffi-ciency network and market. “I sow chili, you sow tomatoes and another sugar cane and then we exchange the goods,” explains Cirino Plácido, a leader in the OCR (Cirino Plácido 2001).
The construction of an autonomous self-administration at a local level in Guerrero is obvious, although it is not declared as such. CRAC–PC radio operator Bruno Plácido Valerio, a “supporter of the Executive Committee” of the police put it this way: “We don’t talk about autonomy, because the word causes a lot of fuss, but we practice it” (Bruno Plácido Valerio 2001).
Venezuela: communal councils, communes and communal cities
The socialist transformation aimed at by revolutionary Bolivarianism4 is grounded in building council structures from the bottom up. These structures of self-government and control of the means of pro-duction are meant to cooperate and converge at higher levels, in order to overcome the bourgeois state and gradually replace it with what Chávez in 2007 named a “Communal State”. In a Communal State the rift between the economic, the social, and the political spheres – between civil society and political society – would be over-come and popular power would replace bourgeois civil society. The Communal State would also prevent, at the same time, the over-centra-lisation that characterised the countries of “actually existing socialism” (Chávez Frías 2008, 67).
Since 2000, one year after Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela for the first time, popular organisations, communities and some government institutions started to develop local self-government initiatives. In 2005 the Communal Councils (CCs) became the main mode of self-administration at the neighbourhood level, and in 2007 the Communes were launched as a higher tier above them. Both are non-representative forms of self-administration based on assemblies with general participation of all inhabitants older than fifteen years. In 2007, President Chávez proposed to build Communal Cities as a tier above the Communes. Several Communes converge to build a Communal City in a self-defined territory. Some rural Communes started to coordinate and declared themselves Communal Cities, although no law existed. However, it took almost a decade until the number of Communal Cities began growing significantly. This was in part due to the widespread resistance of mayors and governors who saw their power threatened.
The Venezuelan government also promoted the creation of parallel affinity-based councils (i.e., by the disabled, fishermen, peasants, stu-dents and others), that never evolved into structures of broad partici-pation. Only Chávez’ call for building workers’ councils, that corresponded to initiatives brought forward by a part of the workers, was more successful. But their creation also met the strongest resist-ance in the government and in state companies.
The idea of local self-administration is explicitly rooted in the his-torical experiences of indigenous people and Afro-Venezuelans, in the idea of toparchy of Simón Rodriguez, in the thought of Latin American Marxists as Mariátegui, in the concept of popular power (poder popular) and in different socialist and council democracy currents. The concept of a Communal State and a communards’ democracy go back to Kléber Ramírez, one of the central ideologues, founders and commanders of the guerrilla PRV-FALN (Party of the Venezuelan Revolution – Armed Forces of National Liberation), which continued the armed struggle and declared itself “Bolivarian” when the Venezuelan Com-munist Party gave up the guerrilla warfare at the end of the 1960s. A few years later the PRV-FALN began to prioritize social mass move-ments over armed activities and founded Rúptura (“break”) as a mass movement. Ramírez was also the central ideologue of Rúptura. The PRV-FALN and Rúptura read and discussed explicitly the writings of Anton Pannekoek. In 1974 Chávez, while in active military service, was part of the clandestine five-member-leadership of Rúptura. The link to indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan collective and democratic practices is to the customs of common ownership, assemblies for decision making, collective work for the benefit of the community, and especially to organic and ecological agriculture as it is still prac-ticed on the so called “conucos,” small family farms with a mixture of food crops. A key theoretical reference during the Chávez’ govern-ment was the Hungarian-British philosopher István Mészáros, who laid down ideas for a transition to socialism in his book “Beyond Capital” (1995). He proposes to build “communal systems” and he details, with reference to Marx’s Grundrisse, the idea of a communitar-ian and co-operative system based on councils and workers’ control of the means of production.
The first Law of Communal Councils was passed only in April 2006, after some 5,000 CCs had constituted. The CCs became rapidly the most important mechanism for popular participation. Rural and urban marginal communities, who previously had no say, gained more of a voice, and the participation changed from individual, repre-sentative, and passive to collective, direct, and active. The law was reformed in 2009 and 2023. It establishes, that urban CCs comprise between 150 and 400 households, rural CCs around 30 and indigenous CCs ten to 20 households (ANdRBV 2009). The CC is the community assembly of all inhabitants. The CCs form thematic work and planning committees, such as infrastructure, health, water, sports, culture, etc. Every three years, the community votes for spokespeople for each com-mittee and designates a technical organising and financial committee for the council. All decisions are made by the general assembly of the community. The committees elaborate proposals regarding their areas of interest. The proposals have to be approved by the CC, that decides on the priorities. The projects are financed by public insti-tutions or with own means (Azzellini 2017, 93–123).
The Communes emerged from below in 2007, out of the necessity of CCs to develop and implement longer-term projects over a wider area. A law followed in 2010. A Commune consists of several CCs (around ten in rural areas and 20 to 40 in urban areas) and other organisations within the same territory. The CCs send spokespeople to the commune assemblies, while all decisions continue to be made in the CCs. Communes coordinate the CCs, social programs of the government and grassroots organisations so that projects are planned, implemented and assessed jointly (Azzellini 2017, 81–124; 243–251). Decision making in CCs and Communes strives for consensus. Spokespeople, coordinators, and people in charge of specific tasks are elected, have no or only limited decision-making power and can be recalled at any time by the assembly that elected them. At first the self-administration concentrated on repairing homes and infrastructure. Around 2007 productive projects began increasing. At that time, the government was intensively promoting cooperatives. But the common workers’ cooperatives did not necessarily correspond to the interests of the communities and did therefore not allow advance plan-ning of a communal production cycle (production, processing and distri-bution). The cooperatives ended often being part of capitalist commodity chains, for example producing backpacks for transnational brands. The CCs and Communes began therefore to form cooperatives controlled by the community. Some institutions also developed models for commu-nal cooperatives. Over time the Enterprises of Direct Communal Social Production (EPSDC) became the most common cooperative model. A “Law of the Communal Economic System,” elaborated with the participation of Communes, followed in 2010 (ANdRBV, 2010).
In early 2024 there were 49,183 officially registered CCs (72.5 percent were up to date with their elections), 61.2 percent of which were part of one of the 3,641 registered Communes.5 The numbers had barely increased since 2020. The severe economic crisis and the pandemic hit the self-administration structures hard. State funding dropped, the pandemic made meetings and traveling difficult, and an increasing repression against Communes with economic projects threatening particular interests, took a hard toll. The self-adminis-tration structures focussed on consolidation and the number of Com-munal Cities grew to more than 300 (Hernández Vásquez 2022). During 2023–2024 a significant increase of activities could be observed. Several Communal Cities were in the making and various independent Commune networks reassumed their regional and national encounters.
The division into separate political, social and economic spheres tends to be abolished in the council structures. The inhabitants of the communities determine themselves their territory of reference (Azzel-lini 2017, 98–100, 244–247). Communes and Communal Cities to the (relational) social-cultural-economic space that derives from everyday life (Harvey 2006) and do not have to base their territorial limits on the existing political-administrative structure of municipalities or states. The role of the state is to provide the technical and economic support to the self-administration structures and to guarantee the material con-ditions necessary to build a new society from below. However, the relationship between formal institutions and self-administration is characterized from the start by co-operation and conflict. While the institutional support has played an important role in the massive expansion of CCs and Communes, it has at the same time inhibited and limited self-organisation. Contradictions between representative democracy and its institutions, on the one hand, and the structures of self-government, on the other are inherent. Communards usually see the communes as mechanism to abolish the existing state structure and put increasingly more functions under the organized peoples’ direct control. The statutes of the National Communards Network (RNC), a self-organized commune network encompassing hundreds of communes, state that goal of the RNC is “To progressively dismantle the bourgeois liberal state and construct from the pueblo a new form of government, the Socialist communal state” (RNC 2011). Government officials interpret the council structures as an appendix of the state institutions. Local and regional administrations consider the CCs and Communes often as competitors for resources. When the government in 2016 organized an additional subsidized food distribution system to support the popular sectors to face the crisis, instead of entrusting the CCs and Communes with it, it created a new parallel structure, the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAPS). The cen-trality of Chávez also created difficulties for the organic growth of popular initiatives, given that mayors, governors, and some insti-tutions were more engaged in artificially inflating the number of initia-tives endorsed by Chávez than in supporting a qualitative growth from below. Problematic is that constituted power is structurally in a pos-ition of strength because it controls resources and institutions. The autonomous organization is constantly threatened by institutional attempts to co-opt the councils and impose its own agendas. Ángel Prado, spokesperson of the rural Commune El Maizal, known for its excellent organization and communal productive cooperatives, explains:
Unfortunately, there are big contradictions inside the state, between the state and the popular social movements, and between the state and the commune. Because the government is very powerful economically, it has the capacity to make big decisions, and sometimes with a single blow, it can put an end to interesting experiences. In El Maizal we have had the determination, the strength and the ability to withstand the blows dealt to our organization, to our experiment. There have been acts of sabotage, but we have resisted. (Vaz 2018)
CCs, Communes, and Communal Cities, have generally considered of great importance to develop productive enterprises under collective communal administration. From 2012 to 2023, CCs and Communes built on their own or supported by state institutions 41,427 socio-pro-ductive entities with the aim to benefit the communities in CCs and Communes. 3,939 of those are EPSDC and 90 percent are family businesses. Additionally, there were 22,640 active cooperatives in CCs and Communes.6 The EPSDC principally operate in sectors that respond to pressing social needs, such as food and construction materials production or transport services; textile manufacturers, agri-cultural companies, bakeries and shoemakers are also common (Azzel-lini, 2017: 164–171, 252–258). Communes also created barter networks for regular interchange of products between them, direct supplies from agricultural producers’ Communes for Communes in urban areas, and communal economic activities along value chains.
The productive projects not only have the function of improving conditions and quality of life of the communities and creating the basis for autonomous financing of the communes; they are also seen from a perspective of transformation of the relations of production and the capitalist economic model. Communes and workers of closed private companies or inefficient state enterprises have also joined forces to take them over and turn them into community cooperatives. For example, former workers of the abandoned beer brewery Brahma-AmBev in Barquisimeto and the José Pío Tamayo Commune occupied the former brewery, set up a car wash and began selling filtered deep well water and chicken from the close by worker-recuperated company Beneagro. In 2014 they constituted the EPSC United Proletarians. After several failed eviction attempts by the oppositional regional govern-ment United Proletarians began to produce industrial animal feed in 2016.
Communes and Commune networks engaged in autonomous construction, like El Maizal or José Pío Tamayo, faced hostilities of different kinds and at different levels. Protests and takeovers of land and companies by Communes faced repression by local and regional authorities. In January 2019 four adjacent Communes occupied the abandoned former state-owned coffee farm Las Lomas of 186 hectare in the state of Lara, when it was supposed to be handed over to a big private coffee farmer. The communards cleaned the land, recuperated many coffee plants and started growing coffee, corn, black beans, pigeon peas and other produce. The regional auth-orities reacted with harsh repression and incarcerated several commu-nards up to 60 days until they had to be released because of the popular pressure. In September 2019 police forces tried to evict the communards from the farm, but did not succeed because of the com-munards’ resistance (Martínez and Aporrea.org, 2020). The initiative of the RNC to build a Greater Communal Enterprises of Socialist Production (EPS GC) was blocked and sabotaged by the state authorities. Jiménez Lemon 2022).
In 2022–2023 the Maduro government consolidated again its support for the communes and created structures linked to the regional governments through which communes hand in projects and declare priorities. In 2024 Maduro named El-Maizal-spokesperson Prado Min-ister of Communes right before the presidential elections (Minec 2024). The Maduro government apparently wants to strengthen its position by gaining support in a sector the opposition has almost no presence. The institutional design and the practices, however, still follow the idea of a popular power subordinated to the State. Considering the relationship between constituent and constituted power as antagonistic, the contradiction cannot be overcome. The more the popular self-administration advances, the more the contradictions increase and the more conflictive the relationship with the public institution becomes.
Communal self-administration in line with the councilist repertoire identified earlier, have a long and widespread presence in Latin America. As can be seen with the examples provided, they nourish themselves also on historical forms of collective organization of life of indigenous and Afro-American communities. Some currents of Marxism, socialism and anarchism caught interest in the ancestral col-lective customs and built strategies and perspectives explicitly integrat-ing these elements. The same as some indigenous communities and organizations refer to movements and experiences of communal socialism, and especially to the Paris Commune. Nevertheless, the heri-tage of collective and communal practices among indigenous and Afro-American people and communities is also broad enough that the knowledge of communal and commune socialism is not a necessary requirement for the practice of commune-like democracy.
One of the major lessons from the Latin American experiences is that communal self-administration and collective control of the means of production should not be separated from each other and stand alone. The Latin American contemporary practices of communal self-administration strive for the collective community control of the means of production, considering it crucial for real self-determination. This connects directly with the Paris Commune and Marx, who saw workers’ control of the means of productions as inseparable from democratic self-government:
The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and there-fore of class rule. (Marx 1871, 334)
This is especially important in the context of the practices and debates around the “(new) municipalism”7 2015–2019 following the square movements 2010–2012. Its epicentre was in Spain, some prac-tices surged also in other countries. The (new) municipalism became a very prominent concept of international reference, connected to broad expectations, before its demise without major achievements. Most of the new municipalism did not claim the control over the means of production nor discuss or have any strategies how to advance doing it. The discourse regarding municipalism is usually limited to a “participation” of the people in decisions most often reserved to the political sphere by transferring decision making – or at least consulting – to a local level and reducing the distance between decision making and the affected by the decisions. Local assemblies for decision making reduce also the strict separation of po-litical and social sphere. However, while work was a central issue in the mobilization of the square movements, the new municipalism focused on promoting the commons and the social and solidarity economy through political and institutional initiatives. This focus turned into niche politics for alternative groups and limited the capacity of a broader mobilization. No visible perspective for the non-alternative working class was built. It is likely that it was not possible to take over the means of production in Spain in 2015–2019, however, the issue here is not about taking them over all at once. It is about building a class perspective beyond alternative niches. That means at least to claim the takeover and develop struggles to do that. Self-management and the attack on capital have to happen simultaneously.8 That said, it should be added that the missing goal of the takeover of the means of production was not the only or the main reason for the demise of the new municipalism (Azzellini 2015; Kioupkiolis 2022).
The structures and practices that can be considered part of a coun-cilist repertoire include assemblies for decision-making, spokespeople instead of representatives, work and natural resources as a common, collective work (tendentially), no separation of spheres (economic, pol-itical and social) and no strict division of the legislative, executive, and judicial into three (supposedly) independent branches. The revival of council democracy in Latin America over the past three decades is based on the development of specific practices that are adjusted to the local, regional and national reality. Regarding the general partici-pation, for example, in the case of the EZLN or the MST, the partici-pation is limited to the membership of the organizations. The Zapatista support bases consist only of Zapatistas, and the MST builds its camps only with its members. In the APPO in Oaxaca and in the Communes in Venezuela, political and social organizations present in the territory also send spokespeople to the assemblies.
One aspect could be added to the contemporary councilist reper-toire, especially in reference to the communalist self-administration, but it is also valid for many Workers Recuperated Companies, the workplace takeovers for production under workers’ control: The cen-trality of nature-human relations and sustainability. All forms of con-temporary council-democratic organization pay increased attention to ecological issues and nature conservation. They usually practice organic agriculture, promote responsible and sustainable use of resources and develop collective mechanisms of control. Considering the ecological crisis and the urgently needed socio-ecological trans-formation, it is very likely that the practices of indigenous communities will be of increasing importance in the future.
- Stemming from the Spanish term Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores/as.
- For an overview of the main arguments against the separation of powers see (Demirovic 2015, 43–45).
- Guerrilla groups have traditionally counted on a solid base in Guerrero. Some of their roots go back to the ‘60s and ‘70s, such as the guerrillas led by the rural school teacher Lucio Cabañas, who took up arms in the wake of an army massacre in 1967 and led a guerrilla insurgency. During his pursuit, the army disappeared more than 500 people until December 1974, when it shot Cabañas and buried his body in an unknown location. It was not until December 2001 that Cabañas’ remains, who is revered as a hero in large parts of the rural population, were exhumed.
- By revolutionary Bolivarianism I mean the political-ideological perspective of radical currents and movements aiming at a structural transformation and overcoming the capitalist mode of production. Former president Hugo Chávez aligned with this vision. Government Bolivarianism in general does not. For a detailed analysis see Azzellini (2023).
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Ministry for the Communes and social movements, January 18, 2024, https:// roraima.comunas.gob.ve.
6. Ministry for the Communes and social movements, January 19, 2024, https:// roraima.comunas.gob.ve.
7. There is no common notion of the term. Some authors include some council-democ-racy-like experiences as Rojava, other do not. I refer here to the ideas and practices linked to participatory models in local contexts in Spain and some other parts of Europe.
8. That said, it should be added that the missing goal of the takeover of the means of production was not the only or the main reason for the demise of the new municipalism.
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