Having lived in Venezuela for the past four and a half years, I’ve had many opportunities as an American to observe its president, Hugo Chávez Frias, as he and his party, PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) carry out the unimaginably difficult task of building a mutually cooperative socialist society in the midst of a world which is totally dominated by ruthlessly cut-throat capitalism.
Living here, I've come increasingly to believe, partly thanks to the creative thinking and organizing of Linda Stout, her Spirit in Action/ group and her book, Collective Visioning: How Groups can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable World, Berrett Koehler (2011) that we in the United States need to look at Venezuelan as a possible inspiration to envisioning the type of society we want to live in. First we need the ideas, the shared visions, and then plans of action to bring them about. (And, as Stout emphasizes, we must do it in the positive spirit of joy and celebration, rather than solely focus on what is currently unacceptable.)
Chávez and his supporters started by convening a group of visionaries to imagine a new society. Their vision is incorporated in the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999. It was arrived at through the election of individuals to a constitutional drafting assembly that was elected individually, not by party identification. Their assignment was to envision a new world.
The elected Constitutional drafting assembly produced a shared vision for a very new society, one that promised its citizens the right to a life of dignity, "with all the material, social and intellectual necessities" (Const. Ve, Chap V, Art. 91), and the government of Venezuela was assigned the responsibility to guarantee the creation and distribution of wealth in such a way as to make those rights a reality. (Const.Ve, Chap. VII, Art. 112).
How Did Such a Vision Come About?
Hugo Chávez Frías, a former military officer from a poor family of elementary school teachers and fruit sellers with indigenous roots, was democratically elected in 1998, in a popular reaction to decades of corrupt pseudo-democracy in which the two largest parties and one small, quasi-left one, by means of a formal written agreement in 1958 signed at Punto Fijo, Venezuela, exchanged and/or shared control of the government every four years.