<aside> <img src="/icons/clock-alternate_gray.svg" alt="/icons/clock-alternate_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Last Updated: 5 February 2026

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Kael Abello: Chavez and the People

Recap

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Internationalism and National Liberation

Capitalism did not create colonialism to deal with its internal contradictions; rather, colonialism fuelled the rise of capitalism. If European enclosures created the capital-labor relation, colonial primitive accumulation created the core-periphery relation.
The core-periphery relation is structured on: the denial of sovereignty to colonized peoples; the absolute appropriation of resources without accounting for social reproduction; the racialization as the mechanism of this denial; and the transfer of surplus from periphery to core. The profits generated by imperialism are foundational to capitalism and the living standards they produce ensure that revolution does not emerge in the Global North.
Capitalism allows people to exist in the periphery as long as they do not disturb: property relations (landlordism, resource control by foreign capital); the drain of wealth from periphery to core; dependent state structures.
You can be a "developing state" within the system. You can even be called a "success story" within the parameters left open to you. But the moment you challenge these structural foundations through land reform or nationalization — when you threaten the mode of social reproduction that enables ongoing extraction — you face genocidal war.

Revisit Unit 1 of Chapter 1, Internationalism and National Liberation.

Visit the curriculum →

Watch the lecture →

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Unit 1: Building Communal Life in Venezuela

Date: 14 February at 15:00 UTC

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Instructor: Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert

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In 2009, following years of revolutionary transformation, the Bolivarian revolution accelerated the process of building socialism through the commune as its fundamental organizational unit — determined to replace capital's hierarchical system with democratic, grassroots control of production and society. This turn toward communal construction represented a breakthrough in revolutionary strategy, showing that the project of socialist construction could advance through forms of popular organization that break with the very logic of capital. What are the Venezuelan communes and what lessons do they offer for contemporary socialist movements?

Required Reading

📃 “’News from Nowhere’ — Building Communal Life in Venezuela” by Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina
📃 Socialist Communes and Anti-Imperialism: The Marxist Approach by Chris Gilbert

Recommended Reading

📃 Mészáros and Chávez: The Philosopher and the Llanero by Chris Gilbert

Unit 2: Venezuela Reclaims its Sovereignty

Date: 21 February at 15:00 UTC

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Instructors: [TBC]

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In 1999, led by Hugo Chávez, the Bolivarian Revolution put Venezuela on a path towards sovereignty and socialist construction — determined to improve the economic, social, and cultural conditions for the masses of Venezuela’s people. This victory was significant not only for Venezuela. It was a watershed moment in world history. It emerged in a decade characterized by the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the dismantling of Yugoslavia — a period marked by dejection and demoralization for the world’s progressive forces. The Bolivarian Revolution showed that the project of socialist construction — grounded firmly in the Marxist framework of class analysis and in the struggle against imperialism — remained part of our common political horizon. What is the Bolivarian Revolution and what can we learn from it today?

Required Readings

📃 Geopolitics, Resistance and the Battle for Venezuela: A Conversation with Atilio Borón by Cira Pascual Marquina
📕 Venezuela, the Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution by Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert