Telegraph: Socialism Works

[Chomskyan]

Telegraph (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/evo-morales-reelected-socialism-doesnt-damage-economies-bolivia)
According to a report by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/bolivian-economy-during-morales-administration/) (CEPR) in Washington, “Bolivia has grown much faster over the last eight years than in any period over the past three and a half decades.” The benefits of such growth have been felt by the Bolivian people: under Morales, poverty has declined by 25% and extreme poverty has declined by 43%; social spending has increased by more than 45%; the real minimum wage has increased by 87.7%; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean has praised Bolivia for being “one of the few countries that has reduced inequality”. In this respect, the re-election of Morales is really very simple: people like to be economically secure – so if you reduce poverty, they’ll probably vote for you.


Translation: Socialism works.

On a related note, what tendency would Morales political party fall under?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Even Morales doesn't claim that Bolivia is socialist; he calls the model "Andean capitalism", which is precisely what it is - a form of capitalism.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Morales would be 'socialist' in the same way that many anti-imperialists of the neocolonial world would claim to be socialist to contrast with the anti-socialism of US imperialism. I think things like these developments in Bolivia, the developments in Venezuela etc could be useful to revolutionaries in that they show alternatives to the generally accepted status quo of the neoliberal agenda but they must be combined with the realisation that simply managing capital in different ways doesn't change the very existence of capital and its contradictions.

[Tim Cornelis]

I thought Russell Brand had already proven that socialism works in one of his shows.

As James O'Connor (born 1930) points out, the state relies on tax revenues to fund its costs, whatever these may be. Thus, its financial health is contingent on the health of the rate of capital accumulation. As such, the state is structurally constrained by the reproduction of capitalism, and consequently the state is compelled to act in ways that facilitates capital accumulation. Thus, “In this way, the capacity of social democratic governments to reshape the class structure of society has been inherently self-limiting: attempts at radical redistribution always threaten to destroy the engine of capitalist wealth-creation on which those governments ultimately depend.” (Cockshott/Cotrell, Towards a New Socialism). Bolivia is a perfect example of this.

Morales' social welfare provisions were funded by gas export revenues. If gas prices drop, the system will more or less crumble. Gas revenue is not a solid foundation for government revenue. Thus, he is compelled to create a more hospitable business and investment climate/environment, which is exactly what he is doing by relaxing regulations for multinational corporations (De Volkskrant, 11 October 2014). The actual climate's health has also disappeared to the background of his campaign promises.

[Illegalitarian]

Morales just rode the coattails of Chavismo. He's a decent enough social democratic leader (he has done a lot for Bolivia), but at the end of the day he's still just a radical social democrat, whose more "leftist" policies of redistribution will fade with more and more market growth, which means more and more market pressure for more market-friendly structural adjustments.

[RedWorker]

The ruling ideas of all countries, which are everywhere evidently nothing but the expressions of the ideas of their ruling classes, are nationally differentiated primarily in their mask, which, depending on geopolitics, takes one form or the other, and, consequently, when attempting to appear of a different structure than that of the ideas of other countries, attempt to make themselves look similarly to other (non-ruling) ideas which actually plan such a different structure. In a similar manner, geopolitics dictates the particular [actual, not masked] expression of the ruling ideas, but this is in fact not related to the mask but rather to the geopolitical situation and the specific conditions of the national economy at the time.

In short, Bolivia has a social democracy as that of any other country, which tries to appear leftist in order to differentiate its politics from other countries and attempt to receive higher support from leftists, but with some actually different policies which however are only an expression of the geopolitical situation and the current intricacies of the national economy.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Morales's "tendency" is social democratic stageism. His government is not "socialist" in the sense we talk about, and as 870 said, the government itself does not claim to be "socialist".

Simply put, neither Bolivia, the workers of the world, or Morales himself can rely on the Bolivian economy alone to build socialism. Any nationally based movement in the modern global economy will have to retain Capitalist norms to ensure development.

What Morales's government does show is that broader distribution of basic services and goods does not harm productivity as classical liberals/neoliberals like to argue, but we already new that. We should not confuse wider distribution of basic services with "socialism", however, lest we fall in the same old trap of associating countries like Sweden with the revolutionary values we espouse.

[Illegalitarian]

I would describe it as "radical social democracy" I suppose. That's broad and not specifically helpful but that's what I believe correctly describes the Bolivarian model, which includes what's been going on in Venezuela for almost 20 years now

[Loony Le Fist]

What's important is this part:



Key to the Bolivian economy’s relative success has been expansionary fiscal policy and control over national resources, especially the hydrocarbons sector – a relatively recent development.

In the last three years the government has begun several programs targeted at the poorest Bolivians. These include payments to poor families to increase school enrollment; an expansion of public pensions to relive extreme poverty among the elderly; and most recently, payments for uninsured mothers to expand prenatal and post-natal care, to reduce infant and child mortality. Although the last two years of new programs will probably show some improvement when data is available, Bolivia still has some of the highest extreme poverty rates and infant and child mortality rates in the hemisphere.


I won't hold my breath for the Western mainstream media to admit that both austerity and privatization of national resources are bad ideas. It's not just wealth concentration. There are also negative consequences for the economy as a whole.

Though, austerity doesn't seem to be so much of a problem when the US needs to blow up Iraq to take it's oil reserves go fight terrorism. Companies like US Defense, Northrup-Grumman, and Raytheon don't seem to have to worry a whole lot about austerity.