Indefinite general strike in Bolivia continues

[Devrim]

From Libcom News:


In spite of condemnation from the "socialist" government of Evo Morales, the general strike launched on May 4 against a 5% wage cap continues. On Tuesday May 4, the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB; Bolivian Workers’ Centre), the chief union federation in Bolivia, launched an indefinite general strike against Evo Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government.
Traditionally, the Bolivian government has increased wages on May Day. This year, the government capped private sector wage rises at 5 per cent. The move was met with disappointment and anger from many sections of the working class.
Bolivia is the poorest country in Latin America. The Centre for Labour and Agrarian Development Studies (CEDLA) has compiled statistics taking into account changes in purchasing power.
Based on these numbers, between 2006 and 2009 the average real increase in the minimum wage was barely 1.4 per cent, and the government proposal of a nominal increase of 5 per cent in the minimum wage in 2010 means a real average annual increase of only 2.3 per cent.
But there is more to it than wages. Guido Midma, the executive secretary of the Bolivian miners’ union federation, explained:
“No changes have occurred in the last four years. The promised revival of production has not happened… new jobs have not been created in the natural gas, mining, agriculture or forestry industries. We cannot remain silent. The wage increase is miserable, even more so when the government is siding with the business community at a time when international mineral prices are on the rise. The government is forcing workers into exploitation and slavery.”
Morales’ plea that workers’ be “rational and responsible for the country” was flatly ignored as demonstrations were held around the country, accompanied by a 24-hour general strike which was then extended indefinitely.
The leaders of some unions have initiated hunger strikes in protest. The militant manufacturing and mining workers who have led the strike set up roadblocks. Additionally, the strike has been supported by public health workers and teachers – all of whom are pressing for wage increases between 13 per cent and 26 per cent.
Morales responded by arguing that workers would have to wait for wages to go up gradually and that “This is the way to try to achieve equality among Bolivians. It can’t be done in one fell swoop. That’s impossible. The Treasury can’t do that.”
Echoing neoliberal logic, Morales continued: “While we have begun to improve, I feel as though certain compañeros want everything for their salaries. We have to invest in Bolivia – only by investing can we create more jobs.”
Morales’ Vice-Prime Minister Gustavo Torrico went further, telling the workers that they would have to get used to living on “rations of bread and coffee”. According to the Bolivian paper La Razon, President Morales is currently under the protection of the police and military.
As the strike approached the end of its first week, Morales accused the strikers of being infiltrated by right-wing groups and the US embassy.
Morales’ words and actions are a clear example of the logic of reformism; the logic of attempting to reform a capitalist state. He is constrained by the needs of a capitalist economy, and as such, has moved against the working class.
On the other hand, the COB, founded during the revolution of 1952, is exemplary of the radical traditions of the Bolivian working class. Its Political Thesis, penned in 1970, opens by saying:
“We workers proclaim that our historic mission in the present moment is to crush imperialism and its native servants. We proclaim that our mission is the struggle for socialism. We proclaim that the proletariat is the revolutionary nucleus par excellence amongst working Bolivians…”
Since Morales was sworn in to the Presidency in 2006, however, the COB leadership has been very close to the government. The socialist leader of the Urban Teachers’ Union, Vilma Plata, described COB leader Pedro Montes as a “sort of a subaltern Evo Morales, only defending the interests of the President and not the workers.”
This makes the current strike all the more significant. It represents the first large-scale action of workers in opposition to the Morales government, and it represents a setback for the pro-Morales section of the COB leadership.
The government, desperate to end the strike that is now well into its second week, has signed an agreement with Pedro Montes. Montes, for his part, was delighted to go against the wishes of his union’s members. His fraudulent accord has been resolutely rejected by the strikers.
A number of union leaders, including leaders of the manufacturing and mining sections and the teachers’ union, have called for Montes to step aside. Steps have been taken towards the convocation of a COB conference that could put a new, more pro-working class leadership in place.1 (http://libcom.org/news/indefinite-general-strike-bolivia-continues-17052010#footnote1_lw6ajjw)
As of May 13, the COB is still in talks with the government – but the key question of wage rises has not been resolved. The rhetoric of Morales and his government has become even shriller – they have alternately tried to deny that the strike exists and accused the strikers of sabotaging Bolivia’s “progress”. Yet the strike continues.
This article, by Daniel Lopez, first appeared online in Socialist Alternative.

http://libcom.org/news/general-strike-india-planned-over-price-rises-17052010

Devrim

[chebol]

There is no "general strike".

* There are (small) protests, and there have been a number over the past few weeks.
* There are demands the validity of which I have some sympathy for (as indeed I do for the government's response).
* There have already been a number of accords signed between the unions and government since the "threat" of a strike was made.
* And the centrepiece of the current "general strike" is less than 300 people marching to La Paz.

The COB collapsed as a meaningful vehicle for union and working class organising even before Morales came to power, and most workers and unions aren't interested in the COB's grand rhetoric (which is all it really is, despite the issues on the table). It's not a new phenomenon either. Jaime Solares was once found wandering alone in La Paz trying to find the "general strike" that he had just called.

I suspect the current bombastic COB adventurism is an attempt to make use of the current wage negotiations to make themselves look more important than they really are in order to win back their lost stature.

And it won't work (except in the eyes of western leftists and anti-Moralesists who have no idea of the reality on the ground, but whose ideology necessitates a Radical Unions Vs Populist Morales battle, whether or not it even exists).

There is no "general strike".

Also: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/abi110510.html

[Devrim]

There is no "general strike".

"There is no strike. People are working normally".

I have no idea what is going on in Bolivia, but I know who you hear this line from in lots of strikes.

Devrim

[vyborg]

http://www.marxist.com/open-letter-to-evo-morales-on-cob-strike.htm

[chebol]

I said "there is no general strike". There is, of course, a series of small, largely ineffective, strikes running across the country.

But there isn't any "general strike", outside of the overblown and self-serving rhetoric of the COB, and the fertile imaginations of those who desperately want to believe it.

As I said in my original post, I am broadly sympathetic with the demands of the COB, and the teachers in particular, but the COB has continually overplayed their hand through this kind of ridiculous rhetoric that bears no resemblance to reality.

Dare I say, the more they posture like this, the smaller their "general strikes" will become. It could also hinder and harm the possibility of any future genuine "general strike".

[the last donut of the night]

I'm an ML, but I won't stand by any leaders who denounce striking workers. I really doubt this is an American ploy.

[Devrim]

I said "there is no general strike". There is, of course, a series of small, largely ineffective, strikes running across the country.

But there isn't any "general strike", outside of the overblown and self-serving rhetoric of the COB, and the fertile imaginations of those who desperately want to believe it.

As I said in my original post, I am broadly sympathetic with the demands of the COB, and the teachers in particular, but the COB has continually overplayed their hand through this kind of ridiculous rhetoric that bears no resemblance to reality.

Dare I say, the more they posture like this, the smaller their "general strikes" will become. It could also hinder and harm the possibility of any future genuine "general strike".

I think that some people particularly in English speaking countries where there haven't been 'general strikes' for years, don't really have an idea of what a 'general strike' is today.

In many case what is referred to as a general strike is not particularly general. It is not England in 1926 (I know you are Australian but I don't know enough about the history of the workers' movement there to use an example). The majority of the working class are not involved in these actions.

We had a 'general strike' here earlier this year. It was fragmented and as you put it 'a series of small, largely ineffective, strikes running across the country'. We have another next week, which I expect will be the same. The biggest general strike that I took part in, as a building worker in Lebanon in the 1990s, probably had nearly 50% participation from people in large scale work places. That is pretty massive by today's standards.

I didn't really imagine it was a 'genuine' general strike. What you said is pretty much what I expected.

Devrim

[chebol]

The difference is that Bolivia has seen more or less genuine general strikes, mass uprisings that have overthrown governments, and the like - many of them in very recent history. 1926 as a comparison isn't too far off the mark.

The COB's description of the current strikes as "general" are deliberately intended to evoke these recent large street and industrial battles, and are a call for the vast majority of workers to join them on the streets.

In this they have plainly failed, and it's hardly surprising. They use the same overblown rhetoric far too often, while taking clearly sectoral positions within the working class, and are no longer anything like the power centre they were 15, 20, or 40 years ago. Not even 10 years ago, in fact.

[Just a note on definitions and history: most people who refer to the "peasants" who support Morales are ignorant of the fact that a very large number of them (and we are talking many thousands here) are ex-miners - those same militants on whom the COB once relied in the Altiplano - who moved to the Cochabamba region and became coca farmers when Bolivia's mining sector collapsed. It is no coincidence that this is the most militant area in Bolivia, nor that this is where the MAS and Morales rose to prominence]

I have been in Bolivia (and Ecuador) during a wide range of strikes (some of which I've also taken part in), including ones that have been much larger, more militant and more effective than the one the COB is calling, without them being called "general strikes".

To return to my point, then, there *is* no general strike, outside the rhetoric of the COB, and the imagination of those outside the country who don't understand the reality of the situation. To continue to describe it as such is a misunderstanding and distortion of the reality.

I note that the original article was first published on the site of Socialist Alternative, an Australian group outside of but in the tradition of the IST (Cliffites).

Their site has published absolutely nothing on the recent Cochabamba world people's conference on climate change, which 35,000 people from around the world attended as an alternative to the Copenhagen fiasco, and where the final resolution declared capitalism to be the enemy of the planet and called for the building of an ecological socialist alternative.

But they are more than happy to publish misleading articles on Bolivia designed to undermine and distort the process there.

I'm not opposed to honest critiques of the various Bolivarian movements and their governments, but this article is as much about quarantining the author organisation's members off from the rest of the left in Australia (much of which supports Morales, if critically) as it is about addressing the pros and cons of the Morales administration.

[Usui]

See, when one hears 'general strike', one expects a strike involving large sectors of the workforce, not 300 people.

[Devrim]

See, when one hears 'general strike', one expects a strike involving large sectors of the workforce, not 300 people.

But I don't think that is what is happening, and if you read the piece that Chebol links to it doesn't say that that is the biggest action, nor did it suggest there were only 300 strikers:


Despite the accords, a splinter group of the Bolivian Workers Center launched a march from the Andean town of Caracollo to La Paz, demanding a higher wage increase than the 5% decreed by the government. The march consisted of less than 300 leaders, a majority of whom are miners, manufacturing workers, teachers, and health care workers.I would say that if one small town has strikes of miners, factory workers, teachers and health care workers there almost certainly is something going on.

Devrim

[bleh]

laht. com/ article.asp?ArticleId=357062&CategoryId=14919

[chebol]

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44208
Bolivia: When fantasy trumps reality
Saturday, May 22, 2010
By Federico Fuentes (http://www.greenleft.org.au/taxonomy/term/670)
http://www.greenleft.org.au/sites/default/files/imagecache/article-image/bolivia_evo_morales.jpg


Bolivian President Evo Morales (centre). A new constitution incorporating the rights of indigenous peoples, the beginning of land reform, the nationalisation of important natural resources and increased state social spending to the poor are some of the gains acheived under Morales. Photo: KK+/Flickr

Ironically, while the left is the fiercest critics of biased media coverage, it can also fall in the trap of corporate media distortions, particularly if its coverage dovetails with its own fantasies.

A May 14 article (http://www.sa.org.au/international/2721-general-strike-challenges-bolivian-government) by Daniel Lopez published on the website of Australian group Socialist Alternative is proof of this.

The article echoes the view of a May 10 article on the BBC website, which has a clear dislike of Bolivian President Evo Morales.

The BBC article argued a “general strike” by Bolivian unions marked “the end of the honeymoon period between the left-wing Mr Morales and his power base among the country's poor”.

This position fits nicely with the outlook of Socialist Alternative, which also condemns Bolivia’s first indigenous president.

Lopez wrote that Morales’ moves “against the working class” have led to “the first large scale action of workers in opposition to the Morales government”.
According to Lopez, “demonstrations were held around the country [on May 4], accompanied by a 24-hour general strike which was then extended indefinitely”.

Despite the “sell-out” of the Bolivian Workers’ Centre (COB) leadership, Lopez assured us “the strike is well into its second week”.
A deal struck between Morales and the COB has been “resolutely rejected”, Lopez said, and “the strike continues”.

The ‘indefinite general strike’ that wasn’t
On May 1, as well as nationalising four electricity companies, Morales restated his government would not increase workers’ salaries by more than 5%.

This was met with protests in various cities, the largest of which was the COB-organised rally in La Paz.

One indication of its size is La Prensa’s report that a 300 strong contingent of factory workers (whose union was a key organiser of the protest) tried to jump in front of the miners at the front of the rally, leading to clashes.

COB general secretary Pedro Montes announced a follow-up 24-hour strike for May 4.

Reporting on the May 4 “general strike”, Bolpress said, “hundreds of teachers, factory workers and health workers .... alternated down the Prado in La Paz” in divided marches.

La Prensa said “at least 500” factory workers descended on the labour ministry, where they attempted to burn down the front door, leading to 15 arrests.

Pedro Alberto Calderon, a leader of the La Paz factory workers, continuing the dispute with the miners by calling Montes’s his expulsion from the COB “because he has betrayed the whole working class” by not marching in La Paz, La Prensa said.

Montes instead chose to join a miners’ march in Oruro.

News sources also reported 500 health workers marched in Santa Cruz. In Cochabamba, factory workers blocked the local bus terminal.

About 500 to 1000 marched in Sucre and smaller protests were held in the other capital cities.

“In the combative city of El Alto”, Bolpress said, “productive activity was normal”, as in most of Bolivia.

On May 7, a COB assembly called for an “indefinite general strike” to begin May 10, La Razon said.

Bolpress said that day, Bolivia’s largest peasant organisation, the United Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (CSUTCB), the national women’s peasant federation, the coca growers’ union from the Chapare, and the Departmental Workers Centre of Santa Cruz defended the government and against COB’s actions measures, because “they only hurt the brothers and sisters of the countryside and the country”.

The CSUTCB is the largest COB affiliate, representing 1.5 million peasants. It is a key part of Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party.

By May 11, everyone agreed the “indefinite general strike” was a flop. La Razon’s website that day read: “Scarce support for general strike”.

Union leaders representing teachers, health workers and factory workers did not strike, but were negotiating with the government, La Razon said.

In an article headlined “The government’s offers weaken COB protests”, Bolpress said union divisions “weakened to the point of converting to almost null the general strike”.

Instead, La Prensa said, 300 workers, mainly miners, gathered in Caracollo to begin a 200km walk to La Paz.

The night before, the COB and the government reached a tentative agreement to lower the retirement age from 65 to 58 (51 for miners). Bosses would also be forced to contribute to workers’ pension funds.

The COB, affiliated unions and government officials began to discuss the new proposals. Bolpress said that, although the COB agreed to the new proposals, some teachers, health workers and factory workers rejected it.

La Razon said after futher discussions, the health workers’ union also agreed to the government proposals and called off future actions.

ABI reported on May 13 that Guido Midma, the executive secretary of the miners’ federation who was approvingly quoted in Lopez’s article, said: “The miners’ federation will not allow others to attack [the COB]. On the contrary, we call on these sectors to reflect because they are automatically marginalising themselves.”

A small contingent of mainly teachers continued the march to La Paz. Factory workers and teachers pledged to once again “radicalise” their protests on May 18.

They also continued to call for Montes’ removal and the sacking of several government ministers.

By May 17, La Prensa said the La Paz factory workers’ union had decided to postpone their actions. Union leader Wilson Mamani said the decision was taken at the request of other factory workers around the country.

On May 18, media reports said between 3000 and 15,000 teachers arrived in La Paz, culminating the march from Caracollo.

The National Confederation of Urban Teachers, however, was no longer supporting the march, although it continued to oppose the government’s position.

Teachers’ union leader Federico Pinaya told La Razon some sectors of the union were trying to use the protests in the lead up to internal union elections.

Rural teachers unions pulled out of the protests and returned to the negotiating table.

By May 21, the only sector still protesting was a militantly anti-Morales section of the urban teachers union, who were demanding their wages be brought to the level of rural teachers. But even the leaders of the teachers’ union have since come to an agreement with the government, subject to approval from the membership.

Bolivian reality
The small scale of the strikes and protests does not mean the government’s proposed pay rise should not be debated or challenged.

There are tensions between the Morales government and its base. In the April 4 national elections, MAS faced more competition from dissident MAS sectors than right-wing forces. The Morales government has also had to confront a range of small, but significant, conflicts with sectors traditionally aligned with MAS.

It is clear the movement for change in Bolivia needs to reflect on some of these warning signs.

However, confusing an “indefinite general strike” with a lot of huffing and puffing by a few union leaders, and symbolic protests, mixed with a good dose of internal union politicking, only leads us away from the real issues.

Today, the Bolivian workers’ movement is far from the powerful force some Bolivian union leaders and foreign leftist like to fantasy it still is.

Bolivia’s organised workers’ movement is still suffering from the defeats inflicted by the implementation of neolibeal policies.

About 62% of the working class is in the informal sector, 83% in small companies with less than 10 workers, and the unionisation rate is only 23%. This rate has steady increased under the Morales government.

Nor is this the same Bolivia as in the past.

The 1970 COB thesis Lopez quoted approvingly does not mention the word “indigenous” once, despite the long-oppressed indigenous peoples making up about two thirds of the population.

If this policy of refusing to acknowledge indigenous peoples’ existence was mistaken then, it is criminal today.

Today, a revolutionary movement has developed, whose future is still to be determined — even if it didn’t occur according to COB theses or manuals from afar.

With the COB in steady decline, it was indigenous and peasant sectors that led the resistance to the military dictatorship in 1978, and constructed the CSUTCB as its own independent organisation in 1979.

These sectors led the process of recapturing the historically marginalised indigenous peoples’ self-identity and pride.

The resistance to neoliberalism over 1990-2005 did not emerge from the factories. It began in the countryside and spread to indigenous workers and the urban poor.

The main indigenous and peasant organisations decided it was necessary to move from resistance to taking power. In the 1990s, they decided at a congress of Bolivia’s most powerful unions to build their own political instrument to this end — creating what is now the MAS.

Indigenous struggles
As a result of this historic decision and the mass struggles that followed, they put one of their own in the presidency in 2005, electing Morales with a record high of 54% of the vote.

A new constitution incorporating the rights of indigenous peoples, the start of land reform, the nationalisation of important natural resources and increased state social spending to the poor are some of the gains won since.

Morales also plays a leading role internationally in attacking the capitalist system for its responsibility for the climate crisis. Morales hosted a “people’s summit” in Cochabamba in April that brought together 35,000 people from around the world to organize to fight back.

This does not mean the government cannot be criticised or that workers should not fight for their demands.

But to paint the Morales government as the main enemy because of a dispute over wages, while failing to mention even once the suffering and resistance of the most marginalised who have benefited most from the Morales government, is blind sectarianism.

To raise the wage demands of sector of workers as the central issue in Bolivian politics, while ignore the changes under way and challenge any revolutionary government would face in lifting South America’s poorest nation out of poverty and dependency, is pure and simple economism — that is, counter-posing demands about wages to the broader struggles of the oppressed.

Such positions are rejected by Bolivia’s indigenous majority because they understand that, for the first time, they are charting their own path towards liberation.

Bolivia’s revolutionary process needs a strong independent working class to help push it forward. But those who denounce anyone who tries to relate to this reality as “sell-outs” don’t help such a cause.

[Federico Fuentes is the editor of Bolivia Rising (http://www.boliviarising.blogspot.com/) and co-author, with Marta Harnecker, of MAS-IPSP de Bolivia: Instrumento político que surge de los movimientos sociales . He is a member of Australia’s Socialist Alliance and is based in Venezuela.]

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Your faith in the executive of a capitalist state is touching.

[Charles Xavier]

In Nicaragua, there were strikes, the bourgeoisie supported them.

[chebol]

Your faith in the executive of a capitalist state is touching.

And your naiivete is precious. Point?

[Barry Lyndon]

The willingness of certain so-called leftists to believe anything bad about the revolutionary movements in Bolivia and Venezuela, and their delight in seizing on all the bourgeois slanders they can muster in order sustain their delusional world-view, is truly mind-boggling.

[Crux]

The willingness of certain so-called leftists to believe anything bad about the revolutionary movements in Bolivia and Venezuela, and their delight in seizing on all the bourgeois slanders they can muster in order sustain their delusional world-view, is truly mind-boggling.
You mean the attacks made on COB?

[S.Artesian]

The point is that there are real material conflicts in the Bolivian economy, conflicts that have not been resolved by the MAS government; conflicts which can probably [I say probably because I haven't personally traced the current conflicts back] to the situation in the world markets, the decline in prices for natural gas, and the limitations of the MAS land reform policy- a policy which is based exactly upon the laws passed by Goni in his first administration.

Morales was consistently "behind the curve" in the struggles of 2003 and again in 2005, come late and last to the demands for nationalization, and the nationalization actually executed has hardly amounted to expropriation.

The point is to understand where the class struggle in Bolivia is going, and what the MAS policies mean for that struggle; doesn't mean the bourgeoisie don't or won't try to take advantage of the conflicts that have not been resolved-- of course they will, as they did in Allende's Chile. Does mean that Marxists have to contend with the bourgeoisie and the MAS's inability to resolve the economic conflicts in any manner other than paving the way for the bourgeoisie's imposition of austerity.

[chebol]

Marxists have to contend with the bourgeoisie and the MAS's inability to resolve the economic conflicts in any manner other than paving the way for the bourgeoisie's imposition of austerity.

shows you don't know what's going on in Bolivia, to be honest. So then, I guess the point would be to find out more about the class struggle in Bolivia before jumping the gun and uncritically swallowing the hyped up rhetoric coming out of the COB (and their all-too-willing allies in the West and elsewhere) about "general strikes", etc etc (let alone nonsense about Morales' 'defence of capitalism').

Might I humbly suggest perhaps starting here:
Bolivia’s mining dilemmas (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44103)

Bolivia summit: ‘Planet or death’ battle cry of a new global movement (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/43929)

Bolivia: Between Mother Earth and an ‘extraction economy’ (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44099)


or even here (http://www.greenleft.org.au/search/apachesolr_search/bolivia).

Also, here: http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/

[S.Artesian]

shows you don't know what's going on in Bolivia, to be honest. So then, I guess the point would be to find out more about the class struggle in Bolivia before jumping the gun and uncritically swallowing the hyped up rhetoric coming out of the COB (and their all-too-willing allies in the West and elsewhere) about "general strikes", etc etc (let alone nonsense about Morales' 'defence of capitalism').

Might I humbly suggest perhaps starting here:
Bolivia’s mining dilemmas (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44103)

Bolivia summit: ‘Planet or death’ battle cry of a new global movement (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/43929)

Bolivia: Between Mother Earth and an ‘extraction economy’ (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44099)



Also, here: http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/



I've engaged in some sustained studies of the history of struggle in Bolivia, and I'm not swallowing anything from anybody. Morales, despite, all his rhetoric was the last to endorse nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry, a position forced upon him after he was greeted less than warmly at various demonstrations.

The land reform laws being utilized are exactly the same laws passed by Goni.

COB is not my idea of a revolutionary party, but certainly neither is MAS and its individual peasant proprietor base-- one that failed to come to the aid of the indigenous agricultural workers when they where attacked in the media luna not so long ago. Remember that? How Morales did not act immediately and directly against the fascist gangs murdering and raping indigenous people... but he was more than happy to point out to the those thousands of indigenous persons, villagers as a threat when the constitutional convention was at an impasses-- and as he was also more than happy to ignore his own promises regarding that convention and simply modify about 130 articles of the constitution which caused considerable dissent among the left wing of the MAS itself.

I would suggest you stop swallowing the mother earth bullshit and actually look into the terms of class struggle; and if it isn't too much effort, look back into the history of the previous 'national democratic revolution' in Bolivia's history-- that of the MNR 1952-1964

Try looking a little bit into what actually is taking place in the economy, because it certainly isn't limited to Bolivia-- it's happening in Ecuador and Venezuela, too. And the prospects are not exactly rosy for the triumph of this ersatz socialism of the 21st century.

[chebol]

I for one am not swallowing any "mother earth bullshit". I am, however, more than a little concerned about global warming and climate change, and the implications this has for the quality of life of billions of humans and countless other species on this planet. Any "revolutionary" movement that doesn't placed this concern at the heart of its program, and doesn't recognise that this is an issue for the proletariat of the highest order, is undeserving of the name. Morales, by contrast - and whatever your criticisms of him - is facilitating the provision of a much-needed alternative pole to the corporate profiteering and fraud recently seen in Copenhagen.

Nor am I simply "swallowing anything from anybody" either. After nearly 20 years of "sustained studies of the history of struggle in Bolivia", and Ecuador too, I might add, I'm also alert to cynicism posing as left-criticism, and sectarian posturing by people claiming to "represent" or "understand" from without the terms of class struggle in Bolivia.

To track the complicated meanderings of the class struggles in Bolivia (and elsewhere too, for that matter), you need to learn to let go of 'ideal revolutionary parties', and learn that Bolivia is no longer living the democratic revolution, that times have - as they invariably do - moved on, and that revolutionary movement doesn't always arise when and where you want it to.

As for land reform, I haven't the time to address the issue now, except to say I disagree, and I'll come back to it when I get the chance.

[Crux]

What I want to know, Chebol, is why you are more than willing to let outrageous claims by Morales about the COB, such as CIA infiltration etc just slide, but you get outraged when someone hint's that there are short-comings in MAS socialism.

[S.Artesian]

I for one am not swallowing any "mother earth bullshit". I am, however, more than a little concerned about global warming and climate change, and the implications this has for the quality of life of billions of humans and countless other species on this planet. Any "revolutionary" movement that doesn't placed this concern at the heart of its program, and doesn't recognise that this is an issue for the proletariat of the highest order, is undeserving of the name. Morales, by contrast - and whatever your criticisms of him - is facilitating the provision of a much-needed alternative pole to the corporate profiteering and fraud recently seen in Copenhagen.

Nor am I simply "swallowing anything from anybody" either. After nearly 20 years of "sustained studies of the history of struggle in Bolivia", and Ecuador too, I might add, I'm also alert to cynicism posing as left-criticism, and sectarian posturing by people claiming to "represent" or "understand" from without the terms of class struggle in Bolivia.

To track the complicated meanderings of the class struggles in Bolivia (and elsewhere too, for that matter), you need to learn to let go of 'ideal revolutionary parties', and learn that Bolivia is no longer living the democratic revolution, that times have - as they invariably do - moved on, and that revolutionary movement doesn't always arise when and where you want it to.

As for land reform, I haven't the time to address the issue now, except to say I disagree, and I'll come back to it when I get the chance.

That's all good for you, but then why produce such ideological crap when someone suggests there is a real material basis to these conflicts in Bolivia, a material basis that just as in the past case of the MNR, the present case of the MAS will prove incapable of resolving?

I have no ideal of a revolutionary party, period, but to discount the actual class struggle on the propaganda that the COB is a tool of the CIA, while ignoring the MAS' own service to stabilizing capitalism, not to mention imperialism by contributing military troops to the US/UN occupation of Haiti, seems a tad disingenuous.

It's not a matter of what Morales is positing or isn't regarding Copenhagen, or El Alto, or Sucre, or even Port-au-Prince. It's a question of what the demands of capitalism are, and will be, and the results of the MAS' attempt to reconcile, mitigate, contain actual class struggle-- exactly as it didn't matter how much socialism Allende actually believed in-- whether he believed in a lot or a little, peaceful and democratic, or armed. Because when push came to shove he could not, would not mobilize the workers to oppose the coup attempt, as that would have been the end of containing the workers within the constitution. Thus Allende, in the midst of the coup, urged the workers to "stay at home."


So... either we look at the material conditions in Bolivia, and support, uniformly, the independence of the class struggle from Morales and the MAS, organizing for and in the FEJUVEs, for the neighborhood councils of El Alto which carried this struggle forward in 2003, 2005; for the workers in the hydrocarbon industry; for the teachers; for the workers demanding that their pensions not be handed over to international investment bankers for "management," or we don't, and we think the rhetoric about saving the planet, somehow outweighs the reality of setting up the poor, the workers for another ass-kicking.

[chebol]

Mayakovsky wrote:

What I want to know, Chebol, is why you are more than willing to let outrageous claims by Morales about the COB, such as CIA infiltration etc just slide, but you get outraged when someone hint's that there are short-comings in MAS socialism.How long have you been beating your wife, sorry? I recognise the shortcomings of MAS, Morales and other left political forces in Bolivia, and have not been afraid to say so. If you''l be so good as to actually read what I wrote in this thread rather than assuming, you'll find that I also stated my sympathies for the demands being made by the protesters (while being able to distinguish that from the posturing of the COB).

What I won't let slide are deliberate untruths, distortions, sectarian rubbish and Nostradamus-style-predictions-from-the-sidelines about a struggle currently in progress based on the fact that somebody's read a Rebellion in the Veins half a dozen times (yes, SA, that's a caricature) and thinks that class struggle is like a clock.

As I wrote in an earlier post, let's have honest debate about the shortcomings of Morales (I note again S. Artesian's comment on land reform, which is of this sort, although I disagree with the conclusion appraently being drawn).

Straw arguments - and straw general strikes, for that matter - play no role in furthering the class struggle in Bolivia, nor our understanding of it. (To put this in perspective, today a member of Socialist Alternative - the organisation which first published the "article" that sparked this thread - described the situation in Bolivia today as being "just like Hungary in 1956". Let's keep it real, people).

And talking of straw arguments, S. Artesian has done a good job of creating one out of any discussion of the climate issue with regards to Bolivia. Well done. Now, perhaps you would like to return to planet earth?

[S.Artesian]

As I wrote in an earlier post, let's have honest debate about the shortcomings of Morales (I note again S. Artesian's comment on land reform, which is of this sort, although I disagree with the conclusion appraently being drawn).





You say you want a real discussion of the material conditions determining the class struggle in Bolivia, but you never manage to actually get around to such discussion.

You promise you will, but we all know what promises are, don't we? Fictitious capital.

The conclusion I draw is that the Morales government is not qualitatively, substantively, class-ically different than the MNR government of 1952-1964, and the results of support for that MAS government rather than revolutionary, class-based opposition will be as damaging as the support to the MNR government was, or more recently, support to Allende's popular unity government in Chile, or the second and third coming of the Peron's, Juan and Isabel, in Argentina.

[Crux]

Mayakovsky wrote:
How long have you been beating your wife, sorry? I recognise the shortcomings of MAS, Morales and other left political forces in Bolivia, and have not been afraid to say so. If you''l be so good as to actually read what I wrote in this thread rather than assuming, you'll find that I also stated my sympathies for the demands being made by the protesters (while being able to distinguish that from the posturing of the COB).

What I won't let slide are deliberate untruths, distortions, sectarian rubbish and Nostradamus-style-predictions-from-the-sidelines about a struggle currently in progress based on the fact that somebody's read a Rebellion in the Veins half a dozen times (yes, SA, that's a caricature) and thinks that class struggle is like a clock.

As I wrote in an earlier post, let's have honest debate about the shortcomings of Morales (I note again S. Artesian's comment on land reform, which is of this sort, although I disagree with the conclusion appraently being drawn).

Straw arguments - and straw general strikes, for that matter - play no role in furthering the class struggle in Bolivia, nor our understanding of it. (To put this in perspective, today a member of Socialist Alternative - the organisation which first published the "article" that sparked this thread - described the situation in Bolivia today as being "just like Hungary in 1956". Let's keep it real, people).

And talking of straw arguments, S. Artesian has done a good job of creating one out of any discussion of the climate issue with regards to Bolivia. Well done. Now, perhaps you would like to return to planet earth?
While the COB are weaker than they were 15-20 years ago, and certainly have some secterian shortcomings, I think they are the most revolutionary force present in Bolivia today, i e, I am more inclined to hear what they have to say than the left populist Morales, calling him a left populist is not meant as an attack by the way, I just think that's a correct appraisal of where he stands. Undoubtedly his government is progressive, but also vacillating, in as far as the MAS government are progressive I support them. But having a vacillating position, and even attacking forces on the left, as in the COB strike shows what great dangers lie ahead.

[chebol]

Anyone interested in a (more or less) adult and rather detailed and extended debate on this issue, including actual facts that discuss the actual, existing, reality in Bolivia (well, from some people. The responses, including by the original author, show just how hollow and formulaic the original article and its "politics" are) should head over to En Passant (http://enpassant.com.au/?p=7305).

As for land reform, I'll have to come back to it later. I'm moving house...

[Ismail]

The willingness of certain so-called leftists to believe anything bad about the revolutionary movements in Bolivia and Venezuela, and their delight in seizing on all the bourgeois slanders they can muster in order sustain their delusional world-view, is truly mind-boggling.There is nothing "revolutionary" about Morales and Chávez. Both can be called progressive, but that doesn't mean we need to have "revolutionary" illusions about them. In the end, if a genuine proletarian revolution broke out, they would go against it. Just as Chávez crushed workers uprisings while in the army in the 1970's and 80's.

The degree in which Brezhnevites can proclaim anyone who holds a red flag and dicks around with socialist terminology, rhetoric, and imagery to be "revolutionary" is stupid.

See: http://ml-review.ca/aml/PAPER/2004/DECEMBER/Chavez.htm

When Tariq Ali asked Chávez what his philosophy was back then, Chávez replied:

I don't believe in the dogmatic postulates of Marxist revolution. I don't accept that we are living in a period of proletarian revolutions. All that must be revised. Reality is telling us that every day. Are we aiming in Venezuela today for the abolition of private property or a classless society? I don't think so.

[the last donut of the night]

Look, we have to look at this in a class perspective. You could have the most dedicated revolutionary as head of any bourgeois state; he could love revolutionary socialism to the death, but if there was a genuine revolution he would have to put it down, not because he's some devil or whatever, it's because it's his position as the leader of the bourgeois state to reign the workers in. If he didn't do it, somebody else would, and that's what we call a coup d'etat. Furthermore, I'm an ML, but I'm tired of how some of us will defend an essentially bourgeois leader (being the leader of the bourgeois state) as he calls strikes CIA infiltrated. It's a basic attack on workers, and regardless of the size of the strikes (as some have tried to argue here), we should be defending workers, not the leaders of bourgeois states.

The MAS and PSUV governments are progressive, don't get me wrong, but I'll be damned if I defend bourgeois leaders over workers.