Decentralised participatory planning based on experiences of Brazil, Venezuela and the state of Kerala, India

Marta Harnecker writes on Decentralised participatory planning based on experiences of Brazil, Venezuela and the state of Kerala, India.

These words are aimed at those who want to build a humanist and solidarity-based society. A society based on the complete participation of all people. A society focused on a model of sustainable development that satisfies people's genuine needs in a just manner, and not the artificial wants created by capitalism in its irrational drive to obtain more profits. A society that does all this while ensuring that humanity’s future in not put at risk. A society where the organized people are the ones who decide what and how to produce. A society we have referred to as Twenty-First Century Socialism, Good Living or Life in Plenitude.

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This is a postive statement of what we are aiming for. It is not a negative statement, like saying that we are against Capitalism. This statement also says that we cannot achieve these goals within a Capitalist system.

The key to this model of society is to have decision making done at the appropriate level—not complete centralisation as in the old USSR, nor as complete decentralisation as in Anarchism:

We advocate a more integral process in which it is the people who genuinely discuss and decide upon their prioritises, elaborate, where possible, their own projects and carry them out if they are in the condition to do so without having to depend on superior levels. We seek to fully involve citizens in the planning process, which is why we refer to it as participatory planning.

To achieve complete citizen’s participation we must take the plans of small localities as our starting point, where conditions are more favourable for peoples’ participation, and apply the principle that everything that can be done at a lower level should be decentralised to this level, and only keeping as competencies of higher up levels those tasks that cannot be carried out at a lower level. This principle is referred to as subsidiarity.

Of course, we are not talking about an anarchic decentralisation. The ideal situation would involve the existence of a strategic national plan that could integrate community, territorial/communal and municipal/canton plans with plans developed by other levels of government.

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In Venezuela, the communal council is similar to the soviet in the early history of the USSR:

Each member of the communal council elected by the community fulfils a different function, but it is the residents who, in an assembly, get to analyse, discuss, decide and elect. The citizen’s assembly is the highest decision-making body in the community. Its decisions are binding on the communal council. This is where peoples’ sovereignty and power reside.

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The success of these councils requires the development of people in all communities through education, training, and sharing of experiences.

All this means that those who participate in this process broaden out their knowledge in political, cultural, social, economic and environmental terms, and thereby become politicised in the broader sense of the term. This allows them to develop an independent mind that can no longer be manipulated by a media that remains overwhelmingly in the hand of the opposition.

Harnecker hopes to build such a society within the current system:

Although an ideal scenario would involve the central state deciding to decentralise an important part of the nation’s resources designated to development, there is no doubt that a majority of countries are a long way from finding themselves in such a situation. Nevertheless, we believe that this should not stop local authorities who want to kick start decentralised participatory planning processes in their local area from doing so, thereby contributing to training up residents, through practical experience, to become protagonists of the new society we want to build, one in which peoples’ participation is a central feature.

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Yet, I think Harnecker is wrong to think that membership of such councils should be open to everyone, even enemies. This can only lead to the destruction of the councils.

And Harnecker's desire to build a new society from within cannot succeed without a deep theoretical understanding of the Marxist critique of Capitalism. The creation of such councils is a direct attack on Capitalism, and our enemies have been responding accordingly. They are not doing so in ignorance but in the full knowledge what the success of these councils mean.

Solidarity means the elimination of classes, and the ruling class is directly opposed to this.