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George Ciccariello-Maher argues that the Bolivarian revolution is wrongly dismissed, by critics on both right and left, as a fundamentally statist enterprise — either a continuation of a corrupt and bureaucratic status quo or the consolidation of personal power at the expense of liberal checks and balances. Neither account, he says, can explain what has actually become central to the process: the explosion of communal power. Reading Venezuela through Lenin's concept of dual power — the building of an autonomous alternative power capable of challenging the existing state — he treats the communal councils as a positive step towards a fuller and deeper democracy. He was writing from Caracas.
Précis by Red Mole.
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