Democrats For Change - the short version (Brian) by Winston

Tomorrow (June 2, 2009), empowered citizens of New Brunswick, under the name Democrats for Change, will seek to bypass and in fact directly challenge machine gatekepers by gaining seats within the Democratic power structure of Middlesex County, New Jersey. At first glance, it is easy for many on the "left" to ask, "How is this revolutionary? Seeking to be part of the system? Let alone through being part of a major party?" In reality, this campaign is a living, breathing example of revolutionary democracy's goals in the simplest sense - (do what is necessary, including infiltrating constituted, entrenched, "system" power to) increase democracy, build dual power (not to mention the campaign itself has been organized and conducted in the most democratic of ways, and includes a clearly people-power preliminary "platform").

I commend these citizen candidates and wish them success on this important day. I look forward to longer, more reflective analyses of the campaign on this blog from those who fortune has made more than the mere cheerleader I am.

Banks to Card Debtors: Pay up now!!...Please??? (Brian) by Winston

The credit card biz used to love people with "a taste for credit" -- folks who kept high balances and more often than not paid barely above the minimum. But alas, the party is over. As the economy circles the toilet, credit card banks are reversing course -- offering incentives to pay off balances quickly so your debt balance is off their books like so many other "toxic assets." It's an interesting reversal of a long-standing policy that your balance was a good thing (I wrote about that policy a bit more indirectly here on this blog).

So why do we care? Well, they're in a panic. The banks don't know which way is up. A few weeks ago, the message was, "Buy stuff!!" Now it's, "OK - How can we make you go away?" It is times like these that a re-orientation of our relationship to debt and banks, like a debtors' union or a "bank strike," becomes more viable. The "cultural space" for (the popularization of) resistance is growing, if you will.

PS - By the way, as you might have figured out, "You are not your credit score!" rings truer because you can't even trust the accuracy of that score to begin with.

Thanks, capitalism - enjoy retirement.

Dual Power in the Venezuelan Revolution (George Ciccariello-Maher)) by Keith

This essay was originally published on Monthly Reviews website. It was alos published on the Maoist site Kasama (where I first saw it). 

by George Ciccariello-Maher

Too often, the Bolivarian Revolution currently underway in Venezuela is dismissed by its critics—on the right and left—as a fundamentally statist enterprise. We are told it is, at best, a continuation of the corrupt, bureaucratic status quo or, at worst, a personalistic consolidation of state power in the hands of a single individual at the expense of those “checks and balances” traditionally associated with western liberal democracies. These perspectives are erroneous, since they cannot account for what have emerged as the central planks of the revolutionary process. I will focus on the most significant of these planks: the explosion of communal power.

By viewing the process through the Leninist concept of “dual power”—that is, the construction of an autonomous, alternative power capable of challenging the existing state structure—we can see that the establishment of communal councils in Venezuela is clearly a positive step toward the development of fuller and deeper democracy, which is encouraging in and of itself. But the councils’ significance goes beyond that. The consolidation of communal power says much about the role of the state in the Venezuelan Revolution. Specifically, what is unique about the Venezuelan situation is the fact that sectors of the state are working actively to dismantle and dissolve the old state apparatus by devolving power to local organs capable of constituting a dual power. Transcending the simplistic debate between taking or opposing state power, a focus on dual power allows us to concentrate on what really matters in Venezuela and elsewhere: the revolutionary transformation of existing repressive structures.

‘An Entirely Different Kind of Power’

Lenin—standing at what he felt to be an unprecedented and unforeseeable political crossroads—spoke of the emergence of “an entirely different kind of power,” one fundamentally distinct from that of prevailing bourgeois democracies.1 Alongside the Provisional Government of Kerensky, an alternative government of Workers’ Soviets had emerged, a dual power—or dvoevlastie—standing outside and against the existing state structure. This still “weak and incipient” alternative structure Lenin describes as “a revolutionary dictatorship, i.e., a power directly based on revolutionary seizure, on the direct initiative of the people from below, andnot on a law enacted by a centralized state power.”

What was it that made this power “entirely different”? According to Lenin, this dual power was defined above all by its unique political content, for which the clearest historical reference point was the 1871 Paris Commune.2

The fundamental characteristics of this type are: 
(1) the source of power is not a law previously discussed and enacted by parliament, but the direct initiative of the people from below, in their local areas—direct “seizure,” to use a current expression; 
(2) the replacement of the police and the army, which are institutions divorced from the people and set against the people, by the direct arming of the whole people; order in the state under such a power is maintained by the armed workers and peasants themselves, by the armed peoplethemselves; 
(3) officialdom, the bureaucracy, are either similarly replaced by the direct rule of the people themselves or at least placed under special control; they not only become elected officials, but are also subject to recall at the people’s first demand; they are reduced to the position of simple agents; from a privileged group holding “jobs” remunerated on a high, bourgeois scale, they become workers of a special “arm of the service,” whose remuneration does not exceedthe ordinary pay of a competent worker.

As we will see, this concept can clearly be applied to Venezuela, but to do so entails a double movement: it reveals some of the limitations of the concept itself as originally formulated, and also alerts us to some of the dangers confronting the revolutionary process in Venezuela. By speaking in terms of dual power, the hope is that we might enrich our understanding both of the concept itself and of the Bolivarian Revolution.

The Explosion of Communal Power

In the aftermath of Chávez’s landslide electoral victory in December 2006, the Bolivarian Revolution has taken a radical turn. The enemies of the process soundly defeated, the way has been cleared for the deepening and radicalization of the process. Moreover, with six years of leadership ahead of him, Chávez now enjoys a brief respite from the demands of his “allies,” one which has allowed him to take serious steps against those corrupt bureaucrats within the Chavista ranks who would halt the revolutionary process. The program for this radicalization has been described in terms of the “five motors” driving the revolution, the fifth and most substantial of which is “the explosion of communal power.” This refers to the expansion of local communal councils and their authority throughout Venezuela, a process which began with the 2006 Law on Communal Councils and which has taken off in recent weeks and months.3 At present, there are an estimated 18,320 organized communal councils, and some 50,000 are expected by the end of the year.4 

The committee that authored the Law on Communal Councils was chaired by Communist Party member David Velásquez—recently named Minister of Participation and Social Development—who sees the councils as the basis for the revolutionary transformation of the state, arguing that: “what is sought is to transfer power and democracy to organized communities to such a degree that the State apparatus would eventually be reduced to levels that it becomes unnecessary.”5 But as we will see below, this view also differs from Lenin’s understanding of dual power in that it has operated in part through the legal system and the state apparatus. This difference can be explained by the fact that Velásquez’s vision draws directly upon Antonio Negri’s distinction between “constituent” and “constituted” powers, a distinction which Chávez himself has cited on several occasions and which emphasizes the constant need for the intervention by the “constituent” masses in opposition to the sterility of legality and the adherence to already-constituted structures.6 This distinction—which does not dismiss constituted, institutional, or legal power from the outset, but instead subjects that power to revocation by the people—is much more useful for a discussion of dual power than a homogeneous view of the state structure, and has arguably contributed significantly (partly through Velásquez’s own intervention) to the construction of a serious dual power in Venezuela whose ethical-legal foundation is the constituent intervention of the masses.7

Considering the popularity of constituent power in Venezuela, it shouldn’t surprise us to find that the role of law in contemporary Venezuela is peculiar to say the least. The situation is what one might call a “revolutionary reverence” for the law: not an a priori respect for the law but rather an admiration derived from the experience of revolutionary legislation imposed from below, and specifically the organized defense of the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution (a defense which gave rise to the revolutionary base organizations known as Bolivarian Circles). As the spokesperson for a communal council in the Naguanagua sector of Valencia recently told me—Communal Council Law in hand—“we can’t read the law like a reactionary lawyer, but instead, without violating it, we need to make it fit our social reality in order to restore the true protagonism to the people.” This radical view of the law is, in fact, a manifestation of the Venezuelan emphasis on constituent power: while it is necessary to make use of existing constituted power (in this case, the law), one must never forget that this constituted power relies fundamentally upon the constituent power that enacted it.

According to Article 2 of the 2006 law, communal councils are “instances of participation, articulation, and integration between various community organizations, social groups, and citizens,” the goal of which is to “permit the organized people directly to manage public policy and projects oriented toward responding to the needs and aspirations of communities in the construction of a society of equity and social justice.” These councils, moreover, are required to operate according to criteria which include “mutual responsibility, cooperation, solidarity, transparency, accountability, honesty, efficacy, efficiency, social responsibility, social control, equity, and social and gender equality” (Article 3), and are broadly empowered to “adopt those decisions essential to life in the community” (Article 6). According to the law, councils are to be governed by way of committees whose spokespersons are elected for a tenure of two years (Article 12), and as with elections at other levels, mandates are revocable (Article 6). 

The fiscal autonomy of the communal councils is significant, despite the fact that most funding comes—somewhat unavoidably in an oil-rich nation—via the central government. Chávez has announced on several occasions that in the future, a full 50 percent of the profits derived from the state-owned petroleum company PDVSA—profits totaling more than $6 billion during the first half of 2006—will be transferred directly to communal councils. These funds had been previously directed toward state governors and mayors, but will now be managed directly on the communal level. Toward this end, 590 billion bolívares ($274 million) had already been earmarked for 2,500 communal projects by February 15, 2007, and that figure has only been increasing since.8 So, too, has the breadth of their specified competencies: in response to the recent controversy over meat shortages caused by hoarding, a law was passed giving power to the government to take over businesses engaged in hoarding, and this law gives the same authority to communal councils. While these remain but hints as to the future importance of the councils, they are nevertheless encouraging ones. But what is the relation between the nascent communal councils and the concept of dual power outlined above?

Against Bureaucracy

To take Lenin’s criteria in reverse order, it should be pointed out that the explicit purpose of the councils is to subject the official bureaucracy to the will of the people expressed through direct participation on the local level. While some tentative and insufficient steps have been taken to attack corruption and bureaucracy within the central government, the councils can be seen as taking this fight to another level, both in the “social oversight” authority they are granted over the central government and in the transparent and egalitarian norms which govern their internal operations. In terms of Lenin’s two criteria—revocable leadership and the elimination of wage differentials—it is worth noting that revocable mandates have been a central plank of the Bolivarian Revolution from the beginning, and are enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.9 In terms of wages, the Venezuelan government has begun to take steps to impose ceilings on public sector wages: in January, the National Assembly—citing the fact that some high court judges earn more than twenty-eight million bolívares ($13,000) a month—began work on a law that would limit salaries for government officials to six million bolívares ($2,800) monthly.10

The capacity of the councils to attack bureaucracy and corruption begins with their capacity to supervise other levels of government: every council elects a five-person committee for “social oversight [contraloría]” which in the words of Lenin, places bureaucrats “under special control.” These committees are empowered to oversee “programs and projects for public investment budgeted and executed by the national, regional, or municipal government” (Article 11). This authority represents a powerful weapon against the corrupt bureaucracies that exist on the state and local level, and against those governors and mayors whom many hope the councils will eventually replace entirely. But this is far from certain, as Fernando—an organizer with the Simón Bolívar Cultural Foundation in the historically revolutionary 23 de Enero neighborhood and official promoter of Chávez’s nascent United Socialist Party (PSUV)—expresses a common concern at this stage of the formation of communal councils: “most mayors are playing too big a role in the creation of communal councils, trying to control them. The role of state officials should only be to provide information and facilitate the councils.” 

There is also the hope that, in bypassing these various levels of government bureaucracy, the councils will be able to avoid or at least minimize the corruption that comes with the transfer of funds from the national to the local level. “If a local organization wants to request funding from the government,” Fernando explains, “that money needs to pass through so many hands [e.g. ministries, governors, and mayors] that corruption is inevitable. We hope that the councils will eliminate or at least minimize the possibility of corruption by establishing a direct link between funding and the communities.” While he doubts that fiscal reliance on the state as a whole will be eliminated in the near future—“How else,” he asks, “can petroleum money reach the communities?”—his hope is that the councils will reduce the possibility that the institutions involved remain alienated from the people.

On the local level, moreover, we find the second key element to the councils’ attack on bureaucracy and corruption: direct democracy on the local level. Turning again to Lenin’s emphasis on revocable mandates and limited wages, committee members in communal councils are elected through the direct participation of the community, for short terms (two years), and can be revoked much easier than elected officials at higher levels. When we get to the communal councils, moreover, remuneration has disappeared entirely, and all elected posts are explicitly “ad honorem” (Article 12). Whereas in the capacity of overseeing the central government, the councils serve as a counterweight to the higher levels of power. The directly democratic nature of participation in the councils coupled with the non-remuneration of their elected leadership militate against the corruption and bureaucratization of the councils themselves, thereby making them a more stable and self-sufficient reservoir of dual power. These are structures which simultaneously prefigure a future participatory society while tentatively building forces to attack those elements of the existing state which oppose that transformation.

But the ability of the councils to live up to this hope is far from guaranteed, and up the street at the council election, Carlos Rodríguez—younger brother of one of 23 de Enero’s most famous martyrs—while optimistic, insists that “only time will tell whether the councils will be able to fulfill their function.”

An Armed Populace

Lenin’s second criterion for dual power—that of a directly armed populace—is a more complicated question, since the communal councils are not armed in any official sense. Rather, they must be considered in a broader context, and the history of armed organizations outside and against the state runs deep in Venezuela. Decades of rural and urban guerrilla struggle in the pre-Chávez years have given way not to a pacification and disarmament after his election, but rather to the proliferation of networks of armed, local self-defense units concentrated in the poorest parts of Venezuela. As merely one example, we could mention the various groups concentrated in the 23 de Enero sector of western Caracas, where decades of urban insurgency gave birth to the Coordinadora Simón Bolívar (CSB), the Revolutionary Tupamaro Movement, the Revolutionary Carapaica Movement–Néstor Zerpa Cartollini Combat Unit, and the Colectivo Alexis Vive, just to name a few. Similar organizations exist in the other large barrios of Caracas—Petare, La Vega, El Valle, etc.—and throughout the country as a whole, to which we could add the mysterious activities of the decentralized Bolivarian Liberation Front which operates in rural areas.

These groups have even on several occasions received logistical support from national and local government (especially current Metropolitan Mayor Juan Barreto), though this support has not included arms as the opposition has often claimed. This, moreover, has been a reciprocal relationship: when Chávez was briefly overthrown in April 2002, several of his ministers were offered safe haven in barrios like 23 de Enero and La Vega. So while the space for armed self-defense on the local level has certainly expanded and been encouraged as elected Chavistas have taken over the various levels of the state apparatus, we should bear in mind that this has been a slow and uneven process, both because Chavista hegemony is only now becoming consolidated, but more importantly because, as a revolutionary organizer who is currently working to facilitate local preparations for asymmetrical warfare in the event of aggression against Venezuela by the United States tells me: “Despite Chávez’s pronouncements on the need for a citizens’ militia, many of those within the structure still believe in the state’s need to maintain the monopoly of violence.”

As was the case with the attack on bureaucracy and corruption, this tension emerges on two levels: both withinformal military structures (between the Armed Forces and the reserves) and more importantly between those military (and police) structures and local armed organizations. As to the first, I spoke recently with a member of the National Reserve, who weighed in on the current controversy over what relation the reserves should have to the official Armed Forces. While the current inclusion of the reserves within the Armed Forces might be interpreted as a recognition of the democratic counter-power of militia organization, it is better interpreted as an effort at co-optation and subordination. “The reserves shouldn’t be part of the Armed Forces,” Victor tells me, “we should be invisible, anonymous, waiting and ready to attack any aggressor without being identified.”

This view is echoed by former commander of the reserves and recently named Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel Briceño, who argues that “the reserves should not be a component of the Armed Forces” since they lack the rigid structure of the latter and “should adopt the characteristics of a popular organization.”11 This force he currently estimates at 880,000, with the long-term objective of 15 million reservists (i.e. more than half the population). Rangel Briceño hopes that Chávez will reform the 2005 reserve law to provide the force with full autonomy, in which case the Venezuelan reserve might more closely approximate Lenin’s notion of “the direct arming of the whole people” than any force in recent history. This, at least, is Chávez’s own self-professed objective: “The military reserve must be linked to popular organization...the goal isn’t to have only reserve troops in the battalions, no, it’s the people as a whole.”12

But no matter how popular and autonomous, a centralized reserve structure would nevertheless maintain a degree of alienation from local organs of dual power, and in this sense the communal councils reside in a space between the reserves and local self-defense organizations which rupture the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence.13 Even prior to the establishment of the councils and in the absence of armed self-defense organizations, a widely held distrust of the police  led many communities to take measures to ensure local safety and security. While the communal councils are not in any sense armed revolutionary cadres (as was arguably the case with some of the Bolivarian Circles), the call to decentralize power to the bases has extended to questions of local self-defense and the establishment of local security and defense committees. These “integral security committees” are enshrined in the 2006 Communal Council Law (Article 9), but their existence was largely theoretical until after the December 2006 election. In late February of this year, reserve commander Rangel Briceño—also a member of the presidential council for communal power—announced that the government would be emphasizing the need to establish security and defense committees in the communal councils, adding notably that, “these will be oriented not only toward defense from external military aggression, but as a point ofinternal security, in the carrying out of our daily tasks.”14

This internal security situation in the barrios was explained to me by Rigoberto, who I met at around noon on the day of the communal council elections for block five of 23 de Enero, at which point he was already drinking cold Polar Negra and shots of rum. Given that he was running for the security committee, perhaps it was lucky that he was not elected (he came in fourth place, but insisted that he had actually come in second). Despite his intoxicated state, Rigoberto explained to me how security worked in the zone even prior to the existence of the community council or security committee. “If we catch someone dealing drugs in our neighborhood,” he tells me, “first they get a warning. If they show up again, they get a beating. And if they show up a third time....” He trails off, indicating with a hand gesture that the outcome will not be pleasant. He also recounts a recent situation in which members of the community caught a local malandro, or criminal, robbing the Cuban doctor in the local Barrio Adentro health module: an unarmed crowd of neighbors seized the man, beat him, stripped him naked, and sent him on his way. While this sort of autonomous, local self-management of security matters may seem insignificant, it is a fundamental precondition for the deepening of dual power in Venezuela, and while it didn’t begin with the councils their empowerment in the area of security and defense promises to contribute to it.

However important reserves may be as a “direct arming of the whole people” in Lenin’s terms, we should recall that the reason that Lenin advocated the “replacement of the police and the army” is that these are “institutions divorced from the people and set against the people.” While an autonomous militia might reduce this alienation of security forces—and in this sense is certainly a positive step—the true replacement of the army and the police requires a more substantial break with the “monopoly of violence,” a decentralization of coercive force that is more firmly rooted in local structures. Such decentralized control over security matters has a long history in Venezuela—from guerrilla armies to urban Tupamaros (a Maoist-type self-defense organization)—and the communal councils have the potential to continue and build upon this history.

‘We Created Him’

Given the central role of Chávez in the Venezuelan process, any discussion of the Bolivarian Revolution in terms of dual power clearly requires an adjustment of prevailing categories to account for Chávez’s peculiar role as, in his own words, “a subversive in power.”15 This need to adjust our concepts to accommodate Venezuelan reality is perhaps best put by Oswaldo, a veteran of the Venezuelan guerrilla struggle (himself no friend of constituted power). While agreeing that the concept of dual power has much to contribute to an understanding of the Venezuelan process, he nevertheless cautions that “we wouldn’t want to compare Chávez to Kerensky.” This is more than mere piety toward a leader: it demarcates the particular twist that the Venezuelan experience introduces into the dual power framework.

This tension between concept and reality becomes most acute when we turn to Lenin’s third criterion: that dual power is not legislated, but rather directly seized from below. While opposing dual power—the “direct initiative of the people from below”—to “a law previously discussed and enacted by parliament” might at first glance seem to objectively exclude the experience of Venezuela’s communal councils (these were, after all, a legislative creation), the reality is not so simple. This is because from the beginning, the Bolivarian Revolution has been fundamentally driven from below, and not in the pedestrian, electoral sense.16 For example, Chávez’s 1992 attempted coup—although unsuccessful—was in many ways a direct result of the 1989 Caracazo riot, a massive and spontaneous week-long popular rebellion which spread across the entire country in response to neoliberal structural adjustment. As Juan Contreras, head of the revolutionary Coordinadora Simón Bolívar, puts it: “Chávez didn’t create the movements, we created him.”

The importance of base-level organization, moreover, did not dissipate after Chávez was elected in 1998. In the run-up to the 1999 referendum approving the new Constitution, spontaneous reading groups formed with the goal of studying, understanding, and later defending their new Magna Carta. These reading groups would become the Bolivarian Circles, revolutionary neighborhood organizations (and arguable predecessors to the communal councils) which while fervently supporting Chávez and the revolution have consistently resisted all efforts at formal institutionalization. During the 2002 coup against Chávez, these same Bolivarian Circles as well as other base organizations proved their revolutionary dual power credentials as clearly as they had during the Caracazo: first on April 11 on Llaguno Bridge, where armed Chavistas and members of Bolivarian Circles battled the opposition-controlled Metropolitan Police, holding them at bay for hours to protect unarmed crowds, and later on April 13 when millions of Chavistas swarmed around Miraflores Palace, Fort Tiuna in Caracas, and the Parachute Regiment in Maracay, playing a key part in the military effort to oust the illegitimate interim government and return Chávez to power.

Such events are crucial moments in the history of Venezuelan dual power, demonstrating the capacity of the populace to, in Lenin’s terms, directly seize power from below. But this is not all they show: the relationship between the 1989 Caracazo and the failed 1992 Chávez coup, and between the April 11, 2002, opposition coup against Chávez and the April 13 popular insurgency that returned him to power also indicate a complex top-bottom dialectic between Chávez and the bases which has been a defining feature of the Venezuelan experience. As a result, we find ourselves in the peculiar situation in which even the most radically anti-state and anti-institutional segments of popular base organizations recognize Chávez’s importance for the process of building dual power.

This is perhaps clearest in the Tupamaros, one of the most important dual power forces active in Venezuela. In a 2003 manifesto, the Tupamaros attack those corrupt party politicians who would “re-institutionalize the country,” thereby maintaining the traditional structures of the bourgeois state.17 For the Tupamaros, the revolutionary path is an explicitly anti-institutional one: “The state and its networks, woven through years of domination, do not allow reformist solutions.” Their goal is instead “to encourage dual power by strengthening popular participation, to link, organize, and multiply autonomous social forces.” To this end, they propose communal councils composed of workers and peasants which would represent a “local power that through popular assemblies, without the institutional influence of any sort, would be able to plan, orient, and execute the social force capable of demystifying constituted power.” Here we see the Tupamaros linking the building of dual power directly to communal councils, and doing so precisely through a distinction between constituent and constituted power.

This anti-institutionalist vision—emphasizing as it does the harnessing of constituent power to build a viable dual power alternative—does not exclude participation by those within the state apparatus: for the Tupamaros, the line dividing revolutionaries from reformists cuts across the state structure itself. Specifically, the National Assembly (circa 2003) was seen as a reformist talking-shop, the spearhead of the bourgeois offensive against the revolution. Chávez, in contrast, falls on the side of the revolutionary forces as a result of his “historical role,” that of “a statesman dedicated to the voice of the people.” Despite being surrounded by opportunists, the Tupamaros credit Chávez with “having awakened the abandoned from their lethargy to put the people on the offensive,” that is, Chávez is seen as having activated constituent power toward the construction of dual power. In order to counteract efforts by some sectors of Chavismo to demobilize the population and thereby halt the revolution, the Tupamaros even advocated that the president invoke constitutional powers to dissolve the Assembly.

This seemingly paradoxical effort to construct dual power in alliance with certain segments of the state has also entered into Tupamaro strategy. In 2004 the electoral wing of the Tupamaro movement supported Chavista mayoral candidate Alexis Toledo in the state of Vargas, and upon being elected, Toledo named Tupamaro leader José Pinto police chief of Vargas. To put this development in perspective, we might compare it to Huey P. Newton being put in charge of the Oakland Police Department, and while some Tupamaros have expressed concern about entering into electoral politics, few could argue that to have an anti-state revolutionary in charge of the police represents a step backward in terms of the construction of dual power in Venezuela.

Roland Denis has expressed a similar vision of dual power animated by the intervention of the constituent masses. Contemporary revolutionary movements, Denis tells us, “now focus their attention on cultivating and extending popular power through the permanent reanimation of the constituent power of the people. The old slogan of ‘dual power’ (bourgeois and working-class) valid for the summit of the revolutionary movement today becomes a permanent strategy in accord with the need for the organization of a socialized and non-state power.”18

He proposes “governments of resistance” to carry out local administration tasks, and in fact Denis claims that the councils themselves resulted from a series of meetings held with popular organizations during his short-lived stint as vice-minister of planning and development following the 2002 coup.19 For Denis as for the Tupamaros, the communal councils are central to a dual power strategy informed by constituent power, and perhaps the best evidence of applying the concept of dual power to the Venezuelan context lies in the fact that this proponent of “non-state power” heads up an organization deemed the “April 13th Movement,” named for the day that the Venezuelan masses showed their true dual power credentials, invoking their authority as a constituent power to return Chávez to his position within the structure of constituted power.

In an attempt to clarify Chávez’s peculiar role in the construction of dual power in Venezuela, former Vice President José Vicente Rangel puts it bluntly: “Chávez is anti-power; Chávez is the one that moves things, within power and outside power. Why? Because Chávez is a man who has decontextualized power, demystified it, brought it closer to the people, managed to connect it with the common and everyday citizen.”20

Rangel also refers to this role as that of a “counterpower...exercised outside of constituted power” and against that established structure.21 This, of course, is insufficient: Chávez is neither anti-power nor counter-power. It is only the revolutionary base movements and the nascent communal councils that merit such a title. But against many of Chávez’s critics, we must recognize that the Venezuelan leader has indeed contributed to this anti-power or counter-power—in short, to the construction of dual power—in a significant and decisive manner.

Dual Power and the State

In most contemporary debates regarding the Venezuelan Revolution, both sides have remained mesmerized and thereby blinkered by an overly simplistic view of the state as a homogeneous unit. The resulting debate has been less than useful: must we change the world without taking power, or is itonly by taking power that we can indeed change the world?22 By concentrating on the construction of dual power in Venezuela, we can avoid this naïve debate by focusing on the more constructive question: that of distinguishing between those forces working within-and-for the perpetuation of the traditional state structure and those working within-and-against that same structure, toward its dissolution.

Dual power situations are by definition unstable and ridden with threats. Given the role that some sectors of the state apparatus have played in fostering the construction of dual power in Venezuela, these threats are all the more complex and difficult to discern. What is clear is that the most fundamental of these threats is that the communal councils will never manage to assert their autonomy from the state. This will be all the more difficult given their current reliance on oil income, and so the long-term process of endogenous local economic development and the transition away from an oil-based economy is of the utmost importance to the strengthening of communal power. But since any significant transformation in the structure of the Venezuelan economy is unlikely in the short term, what is more likely is that Venezuelan revolutionary movements will continue to operate as they have for decades: strategically, advancing where the enemy retreats, gradually consolidating the communal councils as a viable dual power force capable of competing with and radically transforming the existing state structure.

Notes
1.   This and subsequent references are drawn from V. I. Lenin, “The Dual Power,” Pravda, n. 28 (April 9, 1917), http://www.marx.org. 
2.   Of course, Lenin also speaks of the class content of the Soviets, but this is not a criterion of any dual power per se. Rather, it explains the Soviets’ antagonistic relation to the bourgeois Provisional Government. It is a basic premise of my argument that dual power can be constituted in geographical—and not necessarily class—terms (although class is never absent, and often explains why certain sectors oppose the existing state). For an insightful discussion of Zapatista dual power which turns the concept explicitly toward autonomous municipalities, see Christopher Day, “Dual Power in the Selva Lacandon,” in R. San Filippo, ed., A New World in Our Hearts(Oakland: AK Press, 2003), 17–31.
3.   República Bolivariana de Venezuela, Asamblea Nacional, “Ley de los Consejos Comunales” (April 7, 2006). 
4.   “Consejos comunales han sido una experiencia exitosa,”Últimas Noticias (April 7, 2007).
5.   El Nacional, January 12, 2007.
6.   Antonio Negri, Insurgencies, trans. M. Boscagli (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 268–292. Here, Lenin appears as the high point in thinking about constituent power in the Western tradition. See alsoUnderstanding the Venezuelan Revolution, trans. C. Boudin (New York: Monthly Review, 2005), 41, where Chávez recalls reading Negri while in prison following the failed 1992 coup. 
7.   Despite being derived in some sense from Negri’s philosophy, in what follows I will be more interested in how the concept of constituent power is used in Venezuela than what it means for Negri. In fact, once placed in its context, the Venezuelan understanding of constituent power is arguably closer to Enrique Dussel’s formulation of potentia againstpotestas, which resists exaggerating the opposition between these two terms, instead emphasizing the need to work toward a disalienation of institutional structures and representation. See his 20 tesis de la política (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2006), forthcoming in English as 20 Theses on Politics, trans. G. Ciccariello-Maher. 
8.   Asociación Bolivariana de Noticias, “Ejecutivo asignará más de Bs. 590 millardos para consejos comunales” (February 15, 2007).
9.   For Dussel, revocable mandates are the key to the radical nature of the Venezuelan Revolution. See Articles 6, 70, and 72 of the Bolivarian Constitution, as well as Dussel, 20 tesis, 147–49. Later this year, some 208 elected officials—from state governors to municipal mayors—could be subject to recall, depending on the capacity of their opponents to collect the requisite number signatures.
10. “No más de 6 millones para altos funcionarios,” Panorama Digital (January 12, 2007). 
11. Últimas Noticias (April 17, 2007).
12. Hugo Chávez Frías, ¡Aló Presidente! no. 216 (March 20, 2005).
13. In this sense, I disagree with Christopher Day’s conclusions in his discussion of Zapatista dual power (“Dual Power in the Selva Lacandon”). While Day can be credited with emphasizing the tensions that emerge when military strategy is at issue, he seems to welcome the monopoly of violence too readily. 
14. Asociación Bolivariana de Noticias, “Consejos comunales se incorporarán a comités de Seguridad y Defensa” (February 28, 2007). 
15. Interview on José Vicente Hoy (March 4, 2007).
16. For a similar if less assertive argument, see Steve Ellner, “Las estrategias ‘desde arriba’ y ‘desde abajo’ del movimiento de Hugo Chávez,” Cuadernos del CENDES 23, no. 62 (May–August 2006), 73–93.
17. This and subsequent quotations drawn from Movimiento Revolucionario Tupamaro, “Manifiesto del Movimiento Revolucionario Tupamaro al Pueblo en General,” July 19, 2003.
18. Roland Denis, “Revolución vs. Gobierno (III): De la Izquierda Social a la Izquierda Política,” Proyecto Nuestramérica-Movimiento 13 de Abril (August 11, 2006).
19. Mónica Bergos, “Es necesario ir más allá de la vigente Constitución bolivariana,” Periódico Diagonal 42 (November 23–December 4, 2007). Denis claims that his eventual removal from the ministry was the result of a powerful reaction by conservative sectors of the Venezuelan state and Chavista movement.
20. Eleazar Díaz Rangel, “José Vicente Rangel: ‘Chavéz es el antipoder,’” Últimas Noticias (February 11, 2007), 40–41.
21. José Vicente Rangel, “Contrapoder,” Últimas Noticias (April 16, 2007), 26. 
22. See for example the recent “debate on power,” including thinkers such as John Holloway, Hilary Wainwright, Tariq Ali, and Phil Hearse, http://marxsite.com

"Obama and the Left" - what "progressives" are saying... (Brian) by Winston

I still subscribe to The Progressive. It has some good nuggets once in awhile (good toilet reading), and I appreciate its century-old roots...

This month, Ruth Coniff and John Nichols each have an interesting piece on how to "push" Obama "from the left." While they represent largely the advocacy model, it is worth a look, as these are the types of analyses many Obama supporters are using when determining how to engage his administration (in an environment in which these "progressives" are ostensibly "in power" and no longer working with "strategies of the opposition").

A nugget from the Coniff piece:

"We're not so much in protest mode and more in expectations and if-we-build-it-it-will-happen mode," she [Medea Benjamin] says. "Who knows how long we can stay in this mode?"

and from Nichols:

"Obama was nominated and elected in 2008 by progressives, both younger tech-savvy activists who made his candidacy an early favorite of the blogosphere and old-school liberal precinct walkers who saw in his candidacy an extension of the frustrating work of opposing all that was Bush and Cheney. The Senator won the Democratic nomination because he was the only first-tier contender who could say that he had opposed authorizing Bush to take the country to war with Iraq....

These activists formed a base within the campaign and the Democratic Party, centered on but not limited to the Obama team's quasi-open website and blog, www.MyBarackObama.com, which did not always cheerlead for the candidate. In June, when Obama broke with Feingold and other Senate progressives to support Bush's rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Senator felt enough heat from his own and independent netroots sites that he was compelled to explain himself, making what Obama described as a "firm pledge" that he would revisit the issue as President to shore up privacy protections....

activists cannot wait for Obama to define the playing field. They must assume that he knows what they know. And this requires a radically different approach than the left took to Southern centrist Democratic Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. The way to influence Obama and his Administration is to speak not so much to him as to America. Get out ahead of the new President, and of his spin-drive communications team.... Don't expect Obama or his aides to do the left thing. Indeed, take a lesson from rightwing pressure groups...."

"Franklin Roosevelt's example is useful here. After his election in 1932, FDR met with Sidney Hillman and other labor leaders, many of them active Socialists with whom he had worked over the past decade or more. Hillman and his allies arrived with plans they wanted the new President to implement. Roosevelt told them: 'I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.'

It is reasonable for progressives to assume that Barack Obama agrees with them on many fundamental issues. He has said as much.

It is equally reasonable for progressives to assume that Barack Obama wants to do the right thing. But it is necessary for progressives to understand that, as with Roosevelt, they will have to make Obama do it."

So...how do these ideas compare or contrast with recent discussions (on this blog and elsewhere) using a revolutionary democratic lens to examine the question, "What now?" What can we take, and what can we leave on the table? What are the real life implications, now that Obama is in office, of finding allies among these circles with whom we can build dual power? And what are some of the possible unfortuante exigencies or possible obsatcles?

Students and Dual Power in Chicago (Nick) by mrsituationist

Students have a unique role to play in building dual power. Contemporary social movements have overlooked the capacity of the university and especially students to participate in building alternative institutions. Student organizing has chiefly taken place in a vacuum, outside of a coherent strategy of building power. This lack of a larger strategy has been highly problematic and has been responsible for the stagnation of our movement. Building power and creating alternative institutions such as legal and medical clinics, cooperatives, education programs etc. are impossible tasks without the professional and occupational expertise learned through higher education. To say the least our movement has not taken an appropriate inventory of our strengths and capacity to transform society. Law students, pre-med students and engineering students have only been as potential sign holders; or if they are truly committed to the struggle, punching bags for the police. These limited opportunities for long term participation and the extremely limited career options offered through existing movement institutions have significantly bounded our demographics. This has favored those who can make a career dealing with social justice, lopsidedly fine arts and liberal arts majors.

Students do not need to wait until graduation to engage in building community power. Universally acknowledged is the fact that universities can do more to benefit their surrounding communities. Offering positions in the cafeteria, even with a union contract, is a sorry excuse for community engagement. Students within the university have a special leverage on the direction of their institution, as well as the direction of individual departments. Changing how the university interacts with the surrounding community takes organization. One example of such student faculty collaboration in Chicago is the New Life Volunteer Society at University of Illinois at Chicago (NLVS). NLVS is now a national student organization of students in the medical field emphasizing service to the community. UIC’s chapter worked with the university and the faculty to open a registered community health clinic on Chicago’s northside that is largely staffed by UIC students for internship credit.

Similarly most law schools in the Chicago offer students the ability to obtain course credit for staffing the school’s affiliated legal clinics. While such opportunities are valuable to low income Chicagoans, their reach is limited, as most law students do not want to sacrifice an opportunity to intern at a high paying law firm internship to work at the schools’ clinics. This represents the clinics’ problem with orientation. As most clinic work is done within the context of a permanent welfare state and not as part of an effort to fundamentally change the dynamics of society, the majority of students are not interested in sacrificing their careers. Few people have the wherewithal to make a career out of being the proverbial thumb in the dam. The story is the same for almost every skilled profession. Our movement desperately needs the skills and talents of students enrolled in universities, but students as struggling individuals almost universally prefer a well paid, secure position at a firm over a lifetime of toil, frustration and projected failure being a “social worker.”

If our movement is to overcome the psychological barriers separating our communities from those qualified to operate the necessary institutions in our communities we need a political strategy. Revolutionary Democracy is a political strategy of building a dual power. We aren’t interested in drawing ourselves and our colleagues into being the footsoldiers of the welfare state; we want an equitable, participatory society, one that ends the exploitation of contemporary capitalist society. As organizers we need to be relevant through orienting ourselves and our neighborhoods around the dynamics of the society we envision. Revolution will only be materialized once enough people have transformed their daily lives around the values of cooperation. This transformation is only possible through participation in alternative institutions. Progress towards a revolutionary transformation can be benchmarked by the public adoption of the dynamics championed by our alternative institutions.

Student organizing has to take another direction, one that is parallel to organizing and building alternative institutions. Not only should organizing be done through at-large chapters at universities but also by professional and occupational interests. Such a tactical orientation recognizes the greater potential of students in the same department cooperating together on the same project. Organizing on campuses should be related to organizing in the larger communities in which the universities are embedded.

In Chicago one immediate goal of SDS could be to organize students in the medical field to reopen one of the cook county satellite clinics closed because of the county’s fiscal mismanagement. Federal subsidies are available for such efforts, as well as loan and tuition reimbursement for those students who guarantee they will staff such community health clinics after graduation. Knowledge of how to run such clinics efficiently can be shared between SDS and student organizations like professional student unions that already coordinate internships, and groups like NLVS at UIC.

Another idea would be to recruit students with plans for small scale green enterprises. With the help of the revolutionary ward organization, they could approach local banks and credit unions for lines of financing to start operations in the neighborhood, with the affiliated campus organization pressuring the university to lend its support to the new enterprises. Leveraging support from specific departments at Chicago’s major universities for local green entrepreneurship would be a great initial goal for such a community development effort. Most likely however, qualified local entrepreneurs will be found in the Chicago City College system, or at less high profile institutions like the Illinois Institute for Technology. Making inroads at such locally focused institutions would also be a great objective for our student movement which has virtually ignored organizing on such campuses.

Focusing on connecting students with entrepreneurship opportunities would be a winning tactic for a dual power strategy. In Chicago such a dual power strategy would probably take the shape of ward organizations. Such organizations would work with affiliated student groups to bring investment into their wards, and would reap the collateral benefits of successful endeavors. Each successful community entrepreneur would bring the ward organization closer to its goal of being a substantive political alternative to the incumbent alderman. Eventually enough people in the community would be connected to the ward organization through social and economic cooperatives and institutions that they would be willing to participate in a political cooperative. Such a cooperative embodied in the ward organization, would make decisions in a directly democratic manner and communicate decisions to a delegated alderman that would run to replace the incumbent alderman who acts on the alderman as representative model.

Coordinating the expansion of the ward organizations is another opportunity for student involvement in building dual power. Although the ward organizations were conceived as efforts initiating in student neighborhoods, they should also work to attract students interested in local politics from around the region. The Summer in the City project out of New Brunswick New Jersey, is a model for Chicago’s revolutionary democratic ward effort. Students from across the country are participating, canvassing neighborhoods, organizing events like bbq’s and concerts and bringing people out to Empower Our Neighborhoods meetings. Something similar in Chicago could involve the ward organizations putting up students on semester breaks to work building ward organization.

Students have a crucial role to play in building dual power in Chicago. They will be the lifeblood of the ward organizations since they are at the heart of the new institutions being built. Students have the ability to leverage the university to support the efforts of the ward organizations. Realizing this powerful capacity will take a shift in strategy in the contemporary student movement. We have to move away from the strictly reactionary politics of protest and move towards a strategy of building power in our neighborhoods. Initially such power building efforts should take place in wards where students live, taking full advantage of the position and resources of the existing student movement. A successful dual power strategy will coordinate the parallel efforts on campuses in neighborhoods, and would effectively harness the potential for the university to transform our neighborhoods.

Architecture of Dual Power in Chicago (Nick) by mrsituationist

Dual power was a phrase coined by Lenin, referring to alternative revolutionary institutions functioning in competition with the institutions of the established power. In his work, “The Dual Power,” he outlined the basic qualities of a people’s dual power, first that it cannot be legislated into existence. It must be a “direct initiative from below,” a direct, local seizure of power. This initiative seeks to replace “officialdom,” or the bureaucracy of the state with the direct rule of the people. Local councils in geographic areas and in workplaces, called Soviets in Russian, were the base of this dual power, operating on direct democracy principles when convenient, when it was impractical representatives were selected and were to be immediately recallable, to be simple agents of their constituency and were to be remunerated similarly to any other worker. Similarly if these local councils were to participate in the established power, through the legislature or any other branch the individuals elected were to be directly responsible to their constituency and were supposed to be held to the same standards of accountability as representatives of the local councils.

Lenin also wrote about the importance of arming the people by the dual power as a counter to the reactionary and class oriented institutions of the police and military. Though this question was eminently relevant in April of 1917, its relevance is not as immediate for 2008 Chicago. What is important however is the long term strategy thrust forward in “The Dual Power.” Lenin was arguing that revolutionary situations were the result of acute clashes between powers in society . Such situations were only possible through the diligent construction of institutions responsible to the people within the context of conflict with repressive established institutions.

As organizers our roles are to be the engineers of the dual power. We have to use our limited resources to build durable, lasting institutions. Revolutionary upheaval will materialize when we can replace the institutions of capitalism and corporate government and make their institutions irrelevant enough to either topple or to quietly fade away. Generations of organizers have been involved in the struggle to build alternative power. We’re faced with what’s left of the old and questions about where, when, and how to begin anew.

Concentric Interactions: Importance of Building Revolutionary Identities

Whether we are transforming the economy, social relations or the government our strategy must be to build our dual power at the most basic, tangible levels available. Without starting at such constituent levels our engagement faces needless abstraction and theoretical confusion as we over extend our resources and begin to treat people as numbers, statistics and “data.” Revolutionary communities are built through the adoption of revolutionary identities by individuals. Any identity is constructed through social interactions, whether revolutionary or reactionary. More interactions means a stronger affiliation with the identity being constructed.

Our strategy to build dual power must be oriented around the idea of concentric social interactions. Commitment towards a political idea is engendered through increasing the number and intensity of relationships sharing similar dynamics. This can help explain the paradox of how such broad based organizations like Moveon.org can wield so little actually power. Movements that fail to build institutions that people interact on a consistent basis have small returns on the limited investment of their members.

The literal construction dual power necessitates an understanding of the how power is exercised by different institutions in society. The first step is identifying the fundamental actors in each institution and how they are related. Next we have to envision our own institutions framing new dynamics between these fundamental actors. Each new relationship someone has with our revolutionary movement, the more invested they become in the idea of social transformation.

Dual Power in Chicago: Where to Begin

In Chicago, the first decision to make about organizing is geographic, where to begin. Chicago has many rich and diverse neighborhoods, but the most fundamental units of government are the city wards. City Council is composed of alderman from each ward, with a mayor elected from an at-large vote every four years. While neighborhoods often overlap with wards, to be politically relevant we have to work on the level of the ward. Politically, our goal must be to build a directly democratic institution alongside the representative aldermanic one, essentially creating a revolutionary democratic ward assembly to replace the dynamic between alderman and constituent.

Chicago’s political realities and the privileges and powers yielded to the aldermen and mayor necessitate a nuanced approach to building dual power. Although our goal is to transform our City Council, and eventually our country, we have to build institutions in ways that won’t overstep our resources. Taking on an alderman connected to Mayor Daley without adequate preparation would not only lead to an embarrassing defeat but also alienate many potential supporters who can’t afford to alienate the Mayor and his allies without having alternatives already in place.

The solution: Ward based organizations whose identity and membership are built through economic, social and other dual power institutions. Applying the concept of concentric interactions, we can build revolutionary power without immediately confronting the power of the aldermen. Under the economic institution of capitalism, the basic actors are producers and consumers, with their relations determined by individual market transactions. Challenging capitalism using a dual power approach means organizing consumers and producers to act collectively. Dual power applied within this context would have our ward organizations creating purchasing cooperatives, building institutions that could eventually replace their capitalist counterparts (Sam’s club, Costco etc.) Consumption of services like childcare, healthcare, as well as education can also be reorganized into cooperative alternative institutions. Similarly changing the context of production in our society would necessitate not only organizing unions to balance the power of management, but engaging in entrepreneurship and employee ownership to change the dynamics of ownership and management altogether.

Exactly which institutions should be organized first should be answered only after a careful analysis by organizers working within a particular ward. The general idea however is to start with those institutions that have the greatest return on invested resources for the residents and to continue introducing new institutions until there is enough commitment on behalf of the ward to engage in a challenge against the seated alderman. Once a person or group is involved in one institution, for example a grocery or childcare cooperative, it is less of an effort to get the same people involved in a workplace or political campaign championing the same ideas and relationships. Social mapping techniques can shed valuable insight into building new institutions and engaging in existing institutions in neighborhoods. Not simply an academic exercise, social maps of neighborhoods can be crucial tools towards leveraging influential individuals and institutions to either participate or at least not oppose organizing in neighborhoods.

Connecting with Existing Institutions

Luckily brilliant and inspiring efforts have been undertaken across Chicago by people who share the ideals of participatory democracy. What has been missing has been the focused coordination around such efforts to build tangible power. An initial inventory of a ward for organizers would include existing institutions that could serve as allies in building dual power. Within the context of sympathetic institutions, for example existing purchasing cooperatives, our goal would not be to outcompete them but to engage their members with revolutionary democracy and our objectives for building a ward organization. Even if the existing institutions in question fail to support our mission or endorse our goals, we could almost be certain that some members within such institutions would be sympathetic and we must be ready to involve them in building dual power.

A key task is to support our natural allies struggling to change how power is exercised in existing institutions, for example in unions or schools while also maintaining a critical distance from the agendas of such institutions. We want to simultaneously organize within the base of these institutions while also working to involve those who are more invested in these institutions in our organization. To this end, we want to involve them, like anyone else, in as many dual institutions as possible to cement their identification with and commitment to social change. One relevant example of this happened during the heyday of the CIO and the Communist Party, along with other revolutionary socialist organizations. These groups recognized the power wielded by the industrial unions and sought to build their membership within the unions. Our contemporary organization should also work to build memberships within unions and within other sympathetic organizations with the aim of solidifying relationships between our organizations.

Criteria for Initial Ward Organization

Choosing exactly which ward(s) to begin organizing is a decision with important consequences for the long term development of the campaign. The first ward would ideally be one controlled by a Daley machine alderman so we wouldn’t be challenging a potential ally on City Council. Choosing a Daley stronghold would be a foolhardy decision however, since there are many wards with machine aldermen which would be more receptive to our message of revolutionary democracy and participatory democracy. We want to choose a ward that has resources we could tap into, for example a ward near a major university so we could tap into the resources of the student movement, or a ward with allies who are already mounting a challenge to the ward organization. One tool to suggest potential wards would be social maps of neighborhoods, allowing organizers to make decisions on which wards to begin with through comparing inventories of networking resources available. Once an initial ward organization is started through the efforts of a number of organizers within the neighborhood and through organizers loaned from other neighborhoods, the model could be transplanted to other wards across the city. Each planned expansion into new wards would mean collateral benefits for existing ward organizations, for example, 100 people can purchase goods and services for less than 50 people. Economies of scale will accumulate if we can establish solid initial ward organizations that can anchor future growth.

Prospect for Success of Ward Organizations

The prospects for the success of our revolutionary democratic movement in Chicago are bright. Daley Jr.’s machine is in a state of decomposition after being weakened by federal hiring probes. Contributing to the decomposition is the defection and counter mobilization of Daley’s traditional constituencies, labor unions and Chicago’s Hispanic communities. Although the administration is courting the white liberal vote through initiatives like free rain barrels and bike paths, there has been little commitment to Daley shown by those constituencies with little over 15% overall turnout in the last mayoral election. Our short term goal is to create a number of localized ward organizations that will be engaged in building revolutionary communities. These communities will be built through engaging ward residents in alternative institutions such as free childcare programs, purchasing cooperatives and free education initiatives. While the ward organizations are growing it would be appropriate to lobby the specific aldermen of those wards to become more independent of the machine. Long term however, the goal is to create a more directly democratic ward organization whose will would be expressed in the City Council through a delegated Alderman, maintaining the integrity of the decisions made at the level of the ward organization. If the initial efforts at building ward organizations prove successful, Chicago can become a model for transforming local governance, as well as transforming capitalism into a more participatory economic system.

Revolutionary Democracy and Dual Power (Brian) by Keith

What is “dual power”? Dual power, most generally, is the phenomenon of the existence of two distinct powers in the social relations within the institutions of a capitalist society (the system and the people, the state and the resistance, capital and labor, etc.) – the existence of an entrenched, constituted power AND a transformative, constituent power. Revolutionary Democracy’s definitions and uses of dual power differ from previous ones.

Leninist-derived groups express dual power only vis-à-vis the state. The “second power” within this dual power relation exists only as resistance to (and for seizure of) that state power. They really only use the term “dual power,” then, to describe an event – the sufficient empowerment of the transformative, constituent power on the precipice of revolution.

Many anarchist groups also operate mostly within a state-bound formulation of “dual power,” but instead build toward a second power that exists totally outside of the state. Other anarchist groups do organize otherwise isolated examples of resistance to the state (and thus don’t completely forego engaging state power), but that dual power is still state-based, and has its ultimate goal as the unequivocal abolition of that state.

Revolutionary Democracy sees dual power differently – temporally, corporeally, and strategically.

In Revolutionary Democracy, dual power exists all the time and everywhere – at work, in your home, in the broader society, even within the movement itself. This conception of dual power is more in tune with people’s everyday experience of being forced into a labor process that creates surplus for someone else, and our many daily forms of resistance to it – from slacking at work to organizing and empowering others. And this clearly is not just an economic/labor phenomenon. Just about everyone, everywhere can measure their power against capital’s power – or against other entrenched, constituted power – and know, at a gut-level, “the system sucks.”

This recognition of dual power as an ever-present phenomenon is in no small way linked to Revolutionary Democracy’s recognition of capital (in its broadest definitions) as a social relation, not as a static “thing” – that is, once something is intended to be used as capital (or has become capital), it is inherently imbued with an exploitative social process. Transforming capital into a tool of the people – bending the machine to our will instead of raging against it – is one way that Revolutionary Democracy succeeds in making dual power (cognizant of capital as a social relation) a “living theory” (linked to practice) – a theory in action, a theory in motion.


Therefore, Revolutionary Democracy will sometimes use the term “dual power” to also mean the building or establishing of the “second power.” One might say the city machine was entrenched power, but the growth of EON (dual power as an action) created a state of more clearly discernible dual power (dual power as a phenomenon or fact). Creating consciousness-raising empowerment – direct experiences of agency and self-determination – therefore renders the phrase “dual power” an ongoing strategic process (one that both leads to radicalization as people simply “live the revolution,” and one that furthers cause of achieving specific goals – an example is the widening outreach of “Empower Our Neighborhoods” at present).

Dual Power, Strategy, and Tactics

Dual power meant as the cultivation of the “second power” then, is perhaps the very essence of Revolutionary Democratic strategy. When we strategize, we identify enemies and allies and gain a general plan of how we attack the problem. If the phenomenon/existence of dual power (two powers present in an institution/social relation) is, according to Revolutionary Democracy, omnipresent, then the ongoing fundamental answer to the question “How do we win?” is simple: “Build dual power (cultivate, strengthen the second power). Build it everywhere.” It is here that we see Revolutionary Democracy willing to utilize and infiltrate existing, constituted powers while simultaneously strengthening transformative, constituent power outside those structures. This means we do not dismiss actions such as running for elected office as revolutionaries (an example might be the People’s Campaign of 2000), or, say, building dual power even in institutions like the military or police (unlike anarchists bent on statelessness per se).The degree to which any institution, social relation, etc. is allied with the cause of the people determines how that “dual use” (of the system, and of forces outside it) will take shape. All tactics – more specific, immediate, concrete answers to that question, “How do we win?” – flow from the strategic Revolutionary Democratic theory AND practice of “dual power.”

IM 1: What is Dual Power? (X. & Aaron) by X.

[The following is an IM exchange I recently had with our brother Aaron of Detroit SDS (Wayne State) about dual power, one of the most important components of Revolutionary Democracy. I decided to throw it up on the blog (with his permission) because it provides a lively introduction to the revolutionary democratic approach to dual power which differs from the anarchist approach (and from the original concept of dual power first introduced by Lenin during the early phase of the Russian revolution in 1917). A number of organizers writing on the Pirate Caucus are working on more in-depths articles on some or all of these concepts, but why make everyone wait? Here’s a first stab at it. (I edited this IM for readability, but left the content untouched.) –X.]

Aaron: Did you ever read Brian Dominick's essay on dual power?

me: Can't say that I have. Can you send it to me?

Aaron: Yeah. I'm reading it now. I decided today, I will read about dual power. Hah.
It's a little ideological (anarchist) in rhetoric. But it's pretty solid and lays it out pretty well.

(…)

me: It's the anarchist take. As far as Revolutionary Democracy goes, I think they get half the picture but they fetishize the buildings and the organizations. Power is social relations.
So yes, we must build our own institutions but we must also take over the system's institutions. Those two things must go hand in hand to succeed

Aaron: Seize power, totally.

me: What we're getting at is that dual power is not the alternative institutions vs. the system’s institutions. That's a superficial analysis.

Dual power is the people vs. the system, each seeking influence in all institutions (and yes, the system -capitalism- tries to and does get in the alternative institutions!) It's the network of people organized democratically for revolution, both in the alternative institutions and in the system (behind enemy lines), working together and strengthening each other vs. the network of lost souls still actively working to promote the system.

That's dual power: When you build a Street University that teaches revolution but that also runs programs in the school system that is run by community residents that took over the Board of Education. It's building new small coop IT companies that get access to big contracts thanks to sympathizing supporters working in the corporate boxes. It's organizing cop watch in conjunction with a review of police procedures from the newly elected revolutionary democratic city council so that not only are bad cops exposed, they are removed.

That's why I'm not a big fan of Subcommandante Marcos [leader of the Zapatista movement based in Chiapas, Mexico - mentioned in Dominick's essay on dual power]: he's chilling in his jungle telling everyone to stay out of power (like Zapata, except he got whacked by the system for that mistake!) Meanwhile there's a huge revolutionary democratic upsurge all over Latin America and Mexico is the only country along with Colombia that has a right wing government!

Aaron: I've been pretty critical of the Subcommandante for similar reasons. It's like, I know that the Zapatistas are doing some good things, but I don't really feel like what the Zapatistas are building is a dual power.

me: Exactly.

Aaron: I feel like they're building power in their own community, but staying out and not really competing that much. Of course, it's really hard to tell what’s going on there.

me: That's my read on it too.

Aaron: And I feel that's definitely the anarchist take. Through the Dominick essay though, he does stress and emphasize withdrawing consent, destroying their power while building ours and competing for legitimacy among "the people." But the anarchist analysis is simply: Build the alternative institutions, don't compete, don't seize power, don't mess with "the system", just work in ours.

me: Yep. And that's not a recipe for success because the vast majority of people have to deal with the system's institutions everyday. They can't "boycott" them because they need jobs, education, food, etc. And what people want most is a plan for how to deal with those institutions that makes sure that the garbage is still getting picked up every week.

Hence the reason why there are so few anarchists (or rigid Marxist Leninists, Trotskyists, Maoists, etc) especially with families & jobs, etc.

Aaron: Totally. So your dual power says ... let's build our own institutions, but let's find ways to seize their power (rather than, as some would say "destroy" it?)

me: Sure.

Aaron: Get people sympathetic and tied with the alternative institutions to take positions of power within dominant institutions and reform/revolutionize or dismantle them?

me: Exactly. Most of the institutions need to be revolutionized.

Aaron: Rather than say "destroy" them through non-cooperation, withdrawal of consent, delegitimize?

me: We need to dismantle Guantanamo. Democratize the university. Revolutionize local government. Abolish the Electoral College and the Senate… We also need to organize workers to fight not just for wage hikes but for seats on the board of directors -elected by the workers- until they get a majority and profit sharing, reclaiming control over the surplus value they create.

It's not so much a question of sympathizers getting high positions in the system (although that will happen). It's to go organize the vast majority of the people in the system's institutions to start practicing revolutionary democracy. And most of them are waiting for an opportunity to make change where they're at without having to uproot their lives and their families’ lives.

The key is to use our alternative institutions as the headquarters for these organizing drives and as the labs to experiment with democracy (because we all still need to learn how to do that!!!)

Aaron: Totally.

(You can find the essay that Aaron refers to in this IM at: http://publish.sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2002/09/2403.shtml)

Protests are Fine, but Power is Better (Keith) by X.

In 1996 the New Brunswick the police murdered Carolyn “Sissy” Adams in the middle of the night. Local organizers (the group at the time was called the New Jersey Freedom Organization (NJFO) learned of the murder and released a flyer that hit the street before the morning newspapers calling for a demonstration that evening. Thousands of people turned out and the crowd grew as we marched through the city. We marched onto the highway and shut down the courts for the evening, it was thrilling and we made lots of radical demands like an “all elected civilian police control board” (still a good project). But we didn’t really know what to do next. So we called for another rally... surprise, surprise, there were a lot less people at the second rally. We still didn't know what to do so we went on to call for another rally, although we could see the writing on the wall and had the good sense to call it a “vigil.” We were, like much of the left today, stuck in protest mode. After discussions, thinking, and more practice we started to draw lessons. We concluded that protests are very limited if they are not linked up with a movement building revolutionary democratic organization of people working and deciding together and struggling seriously for political power -- school boards, dog catcher, PTA, student government, City Council, whatever, as long as it is piece by piece and step by step building and growing a revolutionary democratic movement, building dual power and undermining the power of the bourgeois state. BTW, the national anti-war movement is stuck in protest mode—the demonstrations started very large, just like our initial demonstration, but they keep getting smaller and smaller. This is probably a predictable pattern. An initial large rally in protest of whatever heinous act perpetuated by the bourgeoisie against the people, and increasingly smaller rallies as the people increasingly realize nothing will come of these protests. The people are right, of course, we must organize for revolutionary democratic power.

Protests can be an excellent way to build a movement, but protest mode is an excellent way to destroy a movement. “Protest Mode” makes demands on the “powers that be” but never organizes to take power. Before the war in Iraq began, millions of people participated in demonstrations of protest in the United States and throughout the world. Despite these protests the war started and continues. The problem is relatively simple. The people currently in power, Democrats and Republicans, work for the same rich people, the same corporations (well different corporations—but they all work for corporations) and they will continue to make war regardless of protest.

Protest mode is stuck, then, either in this realization, or the fallacy of benevolence. The fallacy of benevolence fails to realize there isn’t anyone to protest to. The people who run our local, state, and federal government are not good people with the wrong facts. They know exactly what they are doing-- the people that fund their campaigns profit immensely by making the world hell. They can’t be convinced to do otherwise. They must be removed from power. Others stuck in protest mode can’t think of anything else to do. So they organize more “militant” protests: die-ins, fist-shaking, smash the windows of corporate buildings, overturn Fox-New vans, confront the police, or the most militant of all: get arrested! You would only allow yourself to be captured, handcuffed, and jailed if you believe in the ultimate benevolence of the system. We shouldn’t, we should know that it is a malicious system that will not stop war and murder until it is revolutionized.

The question is this: if the people in power will not end the war then we need new people in power. If the Democrats and Republicans both work for corporations who should we put in power? The answer is: US!!!! Not “us” as in “ourselves” narrowly conceived. We need to put representatives of the diverse trends of the revolutionary democratic mass movement in political office. We must transform the way we choose candidates and we must take special precautions to hold them accountable to the decisions of the movement.

In bourgeois representative democracy leaders are elected who are supposed to make decisions that the masses of people can’t understand—that’s why there is always more focus on their character and personality rather than issues of substance. They are “enlightened representatives.” Representatives of the revolutionary democratic movement, on the other hand, actually serve the demands of the masses of people directly and one of their key tasks in office is to breakdown all the undemocratic structures of the bourgeois state, so that representation gives way to direct democracy. We are not confronting the state (protest mode) we are taking the state and transforming it.

This is the revolutionary path, the revolutionary process. We must organize to take power wherever we can put our hands on it—school boards, student governments, student newspapers, PTAs, City Councils, state legislators, governors and so forth. We must transform the way we choose our candidates and the ways that we hold them accountable, there will be no sell out. As we win local power we can connect with others who have also organized successfully. A protest is great if it is linked to a movement struggling for power, then we are not protesting the powers that be, but organizing to take power. Taking power little by little is the essence of the revolutionary process and we can start now.

In New Brunswick, NJ we analyzed our history of practice and the way that local government is organized. In order to win local power, we concluded, we must organize first to transform the local electoral system from one where candidates are elected “at-large” to one where candidates are elected in “wards”--neighborhood by neighborhood—so each neighborhood can elect their own representatives and people power can defeat the power of money. This will radically democratize the city. Corporations rely on the suppression of democracy to wage war. The ward campaign will begin to reverse this so that anti-war sentiment and other projects of the majority of the country will be realized.

Winning the campaign—that is transforming the electoral system of the city from an at-large system to a ward based system—is necessary if we are to win seats in the local government and revolutionize that power. But the most important aspect of the campaign is the development of a mass revolutionary democratic movement—people working together and deciding together. We must concentrate on building the movement and deepening the level of democratic participation of more and more people.

The war in Iraq will not end until the people are organized as a power to end it. The ward campaign is a crucial step on the road to revolutionary democratic power. By democratizing the city we can propose and agitate for laws that will bring the war to an end. We can pass laws that require anti-recruiters to be stationed at all army recruitment posts to ensure that potential recruits are told the truth about the war, we can propose a lie tax so that army recruitment stations must pay higher property taxes, we can close the recruitment stations, or make it illegal to recruit in high schools. We can refuse to enforce the patriot act and other undemocratic measures of the so-called war on terror. We can create a liberated territory of amnesty for all military personnel who refuse to fight, and whatever other real measures we can develop backed by the power of organized people to end the war and revolutionize the society.