GEO MAHER /// Building the Venezuelan Communes

This conversation was recorded to be featured in our March-April 2021 issue “The Paris Commune and the World” for the 150th anniversary of the Commune. In 2016, Geo Maher published a book entitled Building the Commune (Verso & Jacobin) that describes the last ten years of communal councils’ existence in Venezuela during Hugo Chávez’s presidency. Inspired both by the Paris Commune and Indigenous and Maroon praxes, the Venezuelan communes constitute a key example of the political formations we are trying to analyse throughout this issue. Geo Maher is a Philadelphia-based writer, organizer, and educator. He is the author of three books: We Created Chávez (Duke, 2013), Building the Commune (Verso, 2016), and Decolonizing Dialectics (2017). In 2021, he will publish three more: A World Without Police (Verso), Spirals of Revolt (Common Notions), and The Cunning of Decolonization (University of California).