The United States is committed to removing Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro, along with the government he leads. The pretext—that Maduro is involved in sending drugs to the US—is even refuted by the US government’s own intelligence agencies, so many wonder why a carrier fleet has been sent to threaten war. To answer that question, it is necessary to look at what has been going on inside the country.

What do most Americans know about Venezuela? Coverage in the corporate media has focused largely on actions of the upper-class opposition—coup attempts, violent demonstrations, economic sabotage, claims of electoral fraud, etc. We learn about how effective the United States’ blockade on Venezuela’s international commerce has been in impoverishing the country, but the media assure us that the real cause of poverty is “corruption and mismanagement” by the government. The fact that the Venezuelan people have not overthrown what they call the “regime” is explained as evidence of “authoritarianism” and “repression.” Most Americans have no further information, and many assume that it is all really just about control of the oil.

But there is more to the story: a revolutionary process over the last quarter-century that envisions a viable alternative to the capitalist world order, a peaceful transition to a form of socialism based on a truly bottom-up democracy in which decisions are made by the people in their communities. That is an outcome that the United States’ government is sworn to prevent. Our corporate media does its part by its virtual silence about the Venezuela’s communes, even as the late President Hugo Chávez put them at the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. They are the key to understanding why the Bolivarian revolution has survived 25 years of relentless attack.

Chávez summed it up in the slogan Commune or nothing!–¡Comuna o nada!–in his last major speech. He argued that capitalism had led the country into poverty and subjugation; the commune is the path to survival, a peaceful and constructive transition to a form of socialism that is profoundly democratic and egalitarian. What Chávez called “socialism of the 21st century” has been taken up by millions of Venezuelans, members of thousands of communes, urban and rural; people whose hope for a decent future would be swept away if a US puppet were to be installed.

Conceptually, the transition to socialism is easy to outline: The government, with its Bolivarian constitution of 1999, is a necessary instrument for running the mostly capitalist economy that exists in Venezuela today; the Bolivarian movement recognizes that fact, and manages the county’s affairs through its ministries and other institutions. At the same time, that government encourages communities to organize themselves into communes. These are productive entities that are socially owned, managed by their workers, and which produce to satisfy social needs, not for someone’s profit. The government, for its part, channels development funds toward these self-governing, autonomous bodies, and enables them to coordinate their activities regionally and nationally. Eventually they are to become the dominant factor in the economy and the management of the country’s affairs, overtaking and ultimately replacing the capitalist system.

A plan of this kind would seem far-fetched if one were to propose it for other countries, but there are historical and social reasons why there are millions of people in Venezuela who are committed to making it happen. To understand why, a little history is essential.

Throughout the last decades of the 20th century, Venezuela was a neo-colony of the United States. American firms led the development of the oil industry, working closely with the bureaucracy of the State owned oil company. Meanwhile, Venezuelan oligarchs monopolized the food supply by importing food and other products to be sold at prices that undercut local producers. Peasants moved to cities where they joined the huge underclass of desperately poor people trying to survive. They settled wherever they could find a place to construct shelter.

The country was governed by an oligarchy made up of oil company executives, monopolists who controlled importing and the industries, and rural land owners. Their role was essentially to facilitate the extraction of the country’s oil and other resources by foreign corporations, while keeping the local population under control. Their share of the profits enabled them to live a lavish life style, importing big cars, building highways and tall buildings in the cities. A very small share went toward providing streets, water, education, health care, or other basic services to the millions of people in the self-constructed homes that surrounded those cities. The police were given a free hand to control the barrios as they saw fit, often working together with (or as) criminal gangs. A bare minimum of services was provided only when people organized with sufficient militancy, by demonstrating, blocking highways, etc..

The masses of people who needed shelter had to find land to live upon; Caracas and other cities were surrounded by vacant land owned by private interests, the church, or the government. Large groups of homeless people organized themselves to carry out “invasions” of vacant areas surrounding Caracas and........

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