ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author analyses the dynamics of a broad movement to construct an alternative ‘social and solidarity’ form of society based on co-operativism, autonomism and worker self-management, and local community-based development within the context of popular power (poder popular) and the institution of Communal Councils, which was constructed ‘from below’ within civil society, although the leading role of these councils in the social transformation that has taken place in Venezuela over the past decade, and their revolutionary form (autonomous bodies of popular power), owes much to state support. This chapter elaborates this point, but he also argues out that the State has also an inherent tendency to inhibit the development of autonomous structures and tends to control and subordinate social processes. This contradiction, the author argues, in the case of Venezuela became increasingly accentuated the more communities developed the structures of self-government.
