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.
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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.