Chris Gilbert | “Reform will give more power to the people within the democracy” - video Dailymotion

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Chris Gilbert, Professor of Political Studies of the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, analyzes what's coming for Venezuela during the 2025-2031 mandate of President Nicolás Maduro.

Transcript

00:00And to go deep into the relevance of this event, I'm joined once again by Chris Gilbert,

00:06professor of political studies at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela.

00:10Hello and welcome, professor.

00:12Thank you for joining us once again.

00:14Happy to be here.

00:15Well, the constitution, the current constitution of Venezuela is turning 25 years.

00:21Why is a reform called on this moment of the Bolivarian revolution?

00:26And let's also mention that on our first special program, we discussed about the importance

00:30that the government is giving to the communal spaces of the base of the society.

00:35Do you believe that this reform could be a step towards that direction?

00:40For sure.

00:41In fact, Nicolas Maduro, President Maduro said that that would be one of the important

00:43components of the reform.

00:45I mean, in a general sense, I think it's always important to update constitutions.

00:50In fact, I come originally from a country that has a very old constitution.

00:54And that's highly problematic because no one really understands it.

00:57In fact, there's a huge business of constitutional law that has to explain the constitution to

01:02people and interpret it.

01:04So it ceases to be a document that's useful for people.

01:09And so the Bolivarian constitution is 25 years old.

01:12But surely along the way, one faces new challenges.

01:14I think one of the important challenges that's been faced, we can see actually in this recent

01:19electoral conjuncture.

01:21Basically what we saw was a lot of interference from the United States.

01:24They support a candidate.

01:25In the first place, they twist the arm of the people with sanctions, which is quite

01:30a lot like war.

01:31It's quite analogous with actually carrying out a war against the people of Venezuela,

01:34saying we're going to go on twisting your arm until you vote for the person we like.

01:39And then another challenge is simply the old problems of the state, corruption, things

01:43like that.

01:44In fact, a big achievement of the revolution in the last couple of years was the fight

01:49against corruption, and specifically the neutralizing of Tarak Al-Assami's corruption.

01:54You can see how constitutional reform, and specifically a constitutional reform that

01:58puts emphasis on popular power, more democracy, more socialism, could be used to solve those

02:03two problems, to make a more democratic country, and the communes might be an important instrument

02:08in doing that.

02:09And in this sense, what would this reform mean for the people, for the Venezuelan people,

02:14for the common people?

02:15Well, I think that what it should mean is more power for the people, more democracy

02:20for the people.

02:23I think that many people have an ambiguous idea of the state.

02:27If you ask someone on the street, on the one hand, everyone wants the state to solve their

02:31problems.

02:32On the other hand, everyone has complaints about the state.

02:35And that actually corresponds to ideas in political philosophy.

02:38I mean, liberal philosophy has traditionally been against the state.

02:42And then you have the other side of the coin, Hegel, maybe the greatest political philosopher,

02:46or greatest philosopher, European philosopher of modernity, saying the state was the realization

02:51of the ethical idea.

02:53So basically, the state is a highly contradictory phenomenon in capitalism.

02:58And I think the basic solution, which was proposed by Chavez, proposed in part through

03:04the Hungarian philosopher István Mazaros, was to end the alienated state.

03:09And that sounds like fancy words, or end alienated institutionality.

03:12But everyone knows that institutions everywhere in the world, especially, well, in the capitalist

03:16world, institutions end up being separated from the people.

03:19People no longer control them.

03:21So the solution is to bring those institutions under popular control.

03:26And there's a long history of that in the Bolivarian process.

03:29From even before the community councils, there were Mesas Tecnicos de Agua, and then the

03:33community councils, and then the communes.

03:36So there are all these instances of popular power that have actually been very successful

03:40when they've been employed.

03:41In fact, recently, we've seen three consultations in the communes.

03:46And those consultations, people can vote on problems.

03:48They propose those problems.

03:50But it's one important thing, because one problem with formal bourgeois democracy, representative

03:55democracy, is that people get to vote for things that they don't like.

03:59They usually have two options they don't like.

04:02And in these consults, people can actually propose ideas, and their ideas get incorporated

04:07in the process.

04:08So I think there's been a hugely successful project of popular democracy, of going to

04:14the bases to solve problems.

04:15So that's why it's such a wise idea to go further into that, in that direction, with

04:20the upcoming constitutional reform.

Chris Gilbert | “Reform will give more power to the people within the democracy”

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