In the intellectual sphere, I call for people to engage in retrospection and critical revision. We must reflect on our errors with one aim in view: rectifying our interpretations and our practices so that we can make better decisions in the future.
At the same time, however, we have to go forward based on existing examples of resistance, and we must do this so that the willingness to struggle in some parts of our society extends to the whole of it.
Resistance does not amount to struggle unless it's active, unless it's an emancipatory activity that might allow us to advance. If resistance translates into immobility or passivity, taking hits without fighting back, it is not a revolutionary activity, since it doesn't lead to political action. At the end of the day, resistance that keeps one passive has the same effect as pessimism that leads to inaction.
We have to overcome both attitudes: pessimism and the fetishism of pure resistance. The two contradictory states must converge to generate new political forms that will contribute to future victories.
The Bolivarian Revolution was like a wildfire that left behind some embers in the form of grassroots self-organized projects. A few examples are the communes and the social movements such as Pueblo a Pueblo, the Movimiento de Pobladores or the Productive Workers' Army. The feminist movement has also grown in recent years, breaking with some of Chavismo's organizational taboos. What are the prospects of a new revolutionary fire happening?
The metaphor that you use to describe the political process is quite relevant. After a fire, it is much more likely that - instead of imported species - native plants will grow on the land. After a blaze, the plants that have the best chances of blossoming are endogenous ones.
In the same way, the experiences that have the greatest capacity to grow now - the possibility of weaving a new social fabric that will sustain a process of transformations in the future - are those that are well-rooted: the ones that are consolidated and have succeeded in mixing organically with the people.
Today, when everything seems to be against us, we must think about resurgence and burgeoning. When projects receive little attention because the government is no longer interested in that which was called "popular power" - or when there is actually an offensive from the government - the experiences that are strong and have organic ties with the people, those that have deep roots, are the ones that will survive.
And it is precisely the grassroots, communal initiatives, those that have the capacity to produce and have autonomy, and those that are combative (such as the feminist movement that you mention) - these are the experiences that are beginning to flourish.
However, there is a risk of idealizing these experiences in themselves, as atomized phenomena. There is also the risk of imagining that they are a sort of moral reserve or relic, remnants of a time past, of what once was a powerful process. We shouldn't be satisfied with either.
Chavez said: "That which is local, confined to the local, is counterrevolutionary." In saying that, he was expressing an important idea: spaces of resistance must overflow their boundaries. They need to bloom in a world woven by new social relations. In other words, the capacity to resist must be overcome, generating a force that goes against the logic of capital.
We have to build an alternative that is not local or confined to small spaces of resistance. The alternative is to create, from the local level, a new global fabric. It must be a new form of organization that doesn't remain local but rather an organization that expands and develops.
The embers left behind must kindle a new society. However, that is only possible if the different projects of popular power converge. That is, if the projects overcome isolation and don't become self-indulgent and don't become occasions for a self-congratulatory left to project the mirage of socialism. Only then will we be on the right path!
There is no socialism here" we cannot drink our own Kool-Aid. A few isolated projects here and there don't amount to socialism. They are, however, evidence that there is a pueblo that resists and they show that there is a potential for further organization and change.
The task now is to foster the coming together of these diverse spaces of resistance. That requires a political platform aimed at building something together.
The global pandemic and resulting lockdown might be an opportune time for the battle of ideas: a time to clarify positions and proposals. In Chavismo there are two basic proposals: on the one hand, there is the communal proposal that has followers among the popular movement; on the other hand, the "Chinese model" has followers in the government.
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