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  • Monthly Review Essays

About Chris Gilbert

Chris Gilbert is professor of political science in the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela.
  • A Gavidia landscape and campesino home. (Voces Urgentes)

    Growing native potatoes in synergy with the land and its people

    Originally published: Venezuelanalysis.com on October 21, 2023 (more by Venezuelanalysis.com)  |

    Campesinos high up in the beautiful Andean valley of Gavidia are working to preserve the native potato and the way of life that goes with it.

  • Voces Urgentes

    Food for Thought: Pueblo a Pueblo Promotes Grassroots Food Sovereignty (Part IV)

    Originally published: Venezuelanalysis.com on June 2, 2023 (more by Venezuelanalysis.com)  |

    An innovative form of food distribution has been key for schools and communes.

  • Pueblo a Pueblo [People to People]

    Circumventing the Blockade: Pueblo a Pueblo Builds Grassroots Food Sovereignty (Part II)

    Originally published: Venezuelananlysis on May 19, 2023 (more by Venezuelananlysis)  |

    An organization that brings together rural producers with urban consumers breaks with the dictates of the market.

  • A campesino plows the land with animal traction in Carache, the epicenter of Pueblo a Pueblo. (Venezuelanalysis)

    Venezuela: Food is not a commodity, it’s a human right: Pueblo a Pueblo Builds Food Sovereignty (Part I)

    Originally published: Venezuelananlysis on May 14, 2023 (more by Venezuelananlysis)  |

    An organization that brings together rural producers with urban consumers breaks with the dictates of the market.

  • Communard Union congress.

    A milestone: Venezuela’s Communard Union stages its Foundational Congress

    Originally published: Venezuelananlysis on April 19, 2022 (more by Venezuelananlysis)  |

    Chris Gilbert looks at an emergent grassroots movement in Venezuela, as it attempts to build autonomous popular power in a complex relationship with the state.

  • "The Quiet Man"

    Letter from Catalonia: Alarming measures

    Chris Gilbert

    I’m in a small city in Catalonia called Olot, not far from the Pyrenees. I came here because I knew the coronavirus lockdown would be much rougher in Barcelona. Still, people walk around with masks and keep social distances, barely going out.

  • Chavista march in central Caracas

    Defending Venezuela: Two Approaches

    Chris Gilbert

    The law of diminishing returns does not have to operate in the field of international solidarity.

  • Marchers in a rally of the Biplav-led Communist Party of Nepal

    Biplav’s Communist Party of Nepal on the move

    Chris Gilbert

    A five-year-old revolutionary movement in Nepal brings together program and commitment in a way that powerfully prefigures communist society.

  • Meeting Comrade Pasang, Nepal’s Vice President: Dispatch by a far-flung Bolivarian

    Chris Gilbert

    How can politics be a way of pursuing the same goals once pursued in war? And through what form of politics? The career of Pasang, from revolutionary military commander to Vice President of Nepal, raises a host of questions about the transition from war to politics and the conditions of victory in each sphere.

  • Maoist graffiti

    In the wake of Nepal’s incomplete revolution

    Chris Gilbert

    In the aftermath of Nepal’s near revolution, diverse Maoist leaders are attempting to regroup and move forward again.

  • Chavista campesinos march toward Caracas

    How to Reactivate Chavismo

    Chris Gilbert

    Recovering the socialist character of Chavismo in Venezuela depends on activating its latent revolutionary component. This, in turn, hinges on re-encountering the aspiration toward substantive democracy and communal control of production that was once more present in the movement.

  • Chavistas gathered around Venezuela's Legislative Palace to witness the return of Simón Bolívar and Hugo Chávez' portraits

    Venezuela’s embarrassment of riches?

    Chris Gilbert

    Letting the law of capitalist value govern society makes building socialism almost impossible because, even if the general guidelines of capitalist value seem to be acceptable, all it takes is for the market to plunge for you to lose your bearings entirely.

  • Strike at the Helm?  Clamors from a Makeshift Raft

    Chris Gilbert

    In a cabinet meeting in October 2012, months before his death, Hugo Chávez declared that the Bolivarian process needed to make a radical change of course, literally calling for a “golpe de timón” or “strike at the helm.”  From that moment forward the slogan “golpe de timón” began to circulate in the most varied contexts […]

  • Chavism Loses a Battle — Can It Recover and Rectify?

    Chris Gilbert

    Chavism received a serious blow in the parliamentary elections this last Sunday, December 6. The strength of the blow is such that the movement is still reeling. The Venezuelan opposition, loosely organized in an electoral bloc called the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), achieved not just a majority of seats in the National Assembly but also […]

  • “Why Socialism?” Revisited: Reflections Inspired by Albert Einstein

    Chris Gilbert

    Why should one seek socialism?  It is common to adduce that socialism would be more just and fair than capitalism, but that does not fully resolve the issue, since people are not always motivated by social justice.  Moreover motivation — especially for undertakings that are difficult and risky, such as changing a whole society! — […]

  • To Recover Strategic Thought and Political Practice

    Chris Gilbert

    It is common to understand the diverse “processes” in Latin America — in the period marked initially by Zapatismo in the mid-1990s and later by the emergence of left or popular governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador along with center-left governments in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina — within the theoretical framework of a return or […]

  • The Americas Summit on the Border of an Imperialist Abyss

    Chris Gilbert

    Two features of contemporary imperialism are key to explaining the importance — or actually the relative unimportance — of the VII Summit of the Americas (organized by the OAS) recently held in Panama.  One is that, in the post-World War II period, imperialism has operated in a context defined by the prevalence of relatively sovereign […]

  • Fracking Patria, Fracking Humanity: Capitalism and Its Doubles

    Chris Gilbert

    Many Venezuelans think that fracking — the dangerous extraction of oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing of sedimentary rocks — is a conspiracy on the part of the United States to drive them into ruin.  That is not the case, but it is an understandable error, in part because of the US’s long history of […]

  • The Light Brigade: Cuban Doctors Fight Ebola

    Chris Gilbert

    The Ebola epidemic . . . whereas most of the world tightens frontier control and essentially flees from the problem, Cuba opens a new chapter of solidarity and faces the danger.  By sending 255 doctors and nurses to West Africa to deal with the latest Ebola outbreak, the heroic island — with few resources except […]

  • Gabriel García Márquez and the Coming-into-Being of Latin America

    Chris Gilbert

    One of the greatest Latin American authors, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, died last Thursday.  As with any writer whose work becomes a mass culture phenomenon, his work is also the focus of diverse readings.  These readings in turn have a direct bearing on the understanding of our continent’s reality.  For this reason putting pressure […]

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Also By Chris Gilbert in Monthly Review Magazine

  • ‘Where Danger Lies…’: The Communal Alternative in Venezuela July 01, 2023
  • Luisa Cáceres: Commune-Building in Urban Venezuela December 01, 2022
  • Mészáros and Chávez: The Philosopher and the Llanero June 01, 2022
  • A Commune Called ‘Che’: A Socialist Holdout in the Venezuelan Andes March 01, 2022
  • Red Current, Pink Tide: A Visit to El Maizal Commune in Venezuela December 01, 2021
  • Walter Benjamin in Venezuela October 01, 2017

Books By Chris Gilbert

  • NEW! Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project October 01, 2023
  • Venezuela, the Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution October 28, 2020

Monthly Review Essays

  • CFA Franc System in Francophone Africa: A tool of French financial imperialism
    Chen Zhang Franc CFA: pénurie chronique de petite monnaie dans plusieurs pays

    The independence of French Indochina after the Second World War triggered a wave of independence in the French-speaking African countries, and it appeared that French colonial foundations had suffered a huge blow in the early 1960s.

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    An Exchange from 2002–⁠03

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