Class Struggle, No 131, Summer 2019-20

   CS 131 Summer by Dave Bedggood on Scribd

Bolivia: Down with the Coup! For a Workers' and Peasants' Government!

Masses rally against the Coup

The following is translated from our Brazilian comrades of the Grupo de Trabalhadores Revolucionários do Brasil (GTR-BR)

As Leninism-Trotskyism taught us, the Popular Front opens the way to fascism! For more than a decade, left-wing populist and traitor governments ruled by applying imperialist plans and attacking the Latin American working class.

The coup d’état in Bolivia and the instability throughout Latin America is a consequence of the terminal crisis of capitalism, which shows that this system cannot be improved, as the “progressive” governments of the region wanted us to believe.

These popular front and reformists leaders demoralized and demobilized the direct struggle of the workers. They created illusions in the bourgeois democratic regime and they never tired of saying that capitalism was now “democratic” and military coups were no longer possible. Just as they sold imperialist propaganda with the end of the USSR and the neoliberal offensive, of “good” and “peace” capitalism.

The global crisis of capitalism is the affirmation of the Leninist theory that capitalism in imperialist times is destructive, that this is the epoch of crises, wars and revolutions. “21st Century Socialism” proved to be a farce, as well as its supposed “sovereignty” and the theory of a “multipolar” world, which they use to justify their alliances with Chinese imperialism and the BRICS.

The trigger for this coup is the decline of US imperialism that loses influence over the Bolivarian ALBA that turns to China for trade and investment. But China is not just a semi-colony capable of rescuing the ALBA from US imperialism. She is the largest imperialist rival of the US, globally and also in Latin America. It is their economic power that is turning American semi-colonies into Chinese semi-colonies. It is Morales’ agreement with China on raw materials, especially lithium, that has deprived the US and the Santa Cruz oligarchy of most of this great wealth.

The reformist left that shifts all direct workers’ struggle to bourgeois elections and now allies with Chinese imperialism as an alternative to American imperialism is part of the counterrevolution. Bolivia and the whole world are being drawn to the growing inter-imperialist impulse leading to the war between the US bloc and the China / Russia bloc. And the “left” is splitting, supporting one or another imperialist bloc!

Stalinists, RT socialists and some fake Trotskyists defend the imperialist bloc of China / Russia and their allies in LA (Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia) against US imperialism. These LA governments have confrontations with American imperialism that are not at all “anti-imperialist” but pro-Chinese and Russian imperialism. To this left, it is no longer fighting the large foreign enterprises that often drive workers from their homes and lands, and devastate the environment as do the lithium mines today, which destroy the water and destroy the whole Uyuni Salt Flat region. They advocate handing over to Chinese companies, repeating Beijing’s propaganda that their worldwide expansion would be “win-win,” “help” for the semi-colonies. They join with the “progressive” or “democratic” bourgeoisie nationally, and in a great popular front with the imperialist bloc of China and Russia, internationally.

Latin American leftist organizations, Trotskyists like LIT and UIT, do not support Evo or Maduro, and have always placed themselves in leftist opposition to these governments. However, their solution for a way out by bourgeois democracy have placed them in positions of direct defense of the reactionary actions of the bourgeoisie, such as support for the maneuvers that led to Dilma’s impeachment in Brazil. There are also ultra-leftist organizations that stand directly on the right side, defending the coup in Bolivia or Venezuela as progressive that will overthrow the dictators and establish bourgeois democracy. The LIT comes to the nonsense of calling to combat the coup in Bolivia with “free elections!”. LIT, UIT and FT do not see China and Russia as imperialists, but they do not defend them as the Stalinists do. They ignore Chinese expansion into the world and rivalry with the US in their daily politics, and the issue is restricted to a mere formality decided by their leadership, with empirical methods that lead them to revisionist theories of “sub-imperialism” as the LIT thinks, or in “transition” to imperialist, as the FT leadership concluded.

The FLTI says China and Russia are semi-colonies and accuses as revisionist the position that these countries are imperialists. She is right when she says that in the imperialist era, because of its destructive character, it is not possible for a semi-colony to develop its productive forces and become imperialist. This theory of “developed”, “multipolar”, “transitional” capitalism is revisionist and serves the reformist politics of the left to ally itself with the “progressive” national bourgeoisie or “good” China / Russia or “democratic” imperialism. from the USA. FLTI concludes from its analysis of the coup that Morales sold out to the US. If that was the case then how to explain a US backed coup? China and Russia are today imperialists because their revolution recognised that it was only possible to develop the productive forces by ending capitalism. That’s what these countries did. But they failed to defeat global capitalism and were forced to rejoin it. With capitalist restoration they return as rival powers of the USA. Failure to recognize the imperialist character of the China / Russia bloc creates illusions about who is the enemy and precludes a program that fits reality, and that consequently combats imperialism and traitors within the ranks of the working class, especially the Stalinists, who advance in their alliance with China and Russia, defending dictatorships like Assad’s in Syria.

Workers need to get rid of these opportunistic leaders that tie them to the bourgeoisie and its “democratic” regime. The masses that have been suffering the fury of the counterrevolution, as in Syria or the repressions of the coup in Bolivia, show that fascism is growing in this crisis as a necessary method for the bourgeoisie to attack the class and crush it. The only force capable of combating imperialism, fascism and military coups is the organized and independent working class and its revolutionary struggle for the end of capitalism and the bourgeois state, with its Party with a Revolutionary program.

Faced with the crisis in which the country was in, with roads and streets blocked by protesters, government-linked and opposition parliamentarians attacked and their homes being burned down, the COB has spoken publicly to call for Evo Morales to resign without giving any class alternative to the offensive of the traditional right allied with American imperialism. The reformist, “trade unionist” leadership of the COB, and the bureaucratization of the unions where there is no grassroots organization led to capitulation for the coup and betrayal. It is important to call on the COB to form councils and militias and fight for a workers’ government, but this will not happen without a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party leading the struggle.

After the coup, the COB bureaucracy gave more proof of its reformism and treason giving the coup-makers a 24-hour ultimatum “to restore the constitutional order, social peace and unity of the Bolivian people and to avoid further bloodshed, sadness, mourning and violence,” if left unattended, will make a “general strike to march to La Paz.” The sectors linked to Evo’s MAS party demand that the march demand the return of Evo.

For Bolivian workers and peoples not to fall into the counter- revolutionary trap of the bourgeois elections and not be defeated by reaction, a revolutionary party with a Marxist program is needed to lead organized workers in the COB, unions and indigenous organizations to break with their opportunistic leaderships, to build their grassroots and self-defense committees, and General Strike, march to La Paz to defeat the reaction, seize government buildings, occupy the factories and strategic facilities of the Bolivian economy, expropriate the Transnational and landowners, break with all imperialism and install a Workers’ Government that advances the measures by Socialism.

From Bolivia to Syria, Iraq, Lebanon to Hong Kong, from Barcelona to Chile and Ecuador, popular uprisings and revolutionary processes have been driven to defeat by the Popular Front and illusion in the bourgeois democratic regime. The necessary class independence and solidarity among the world’s workers has been replaced by class division to support one or another imperialist bloc and their respective regional bourgeois government allies. 

Faced with the capitalist crisis combined with the threat of a climate collapse, capitalism must die! Long live Socialism!

Class War, Vol 1, No 5, Summer 2013

   Class War Vol. 1.  No. 5 by JohnnBrown

Class Struggle No 105 April-June 2-13

   Class Struggle 105 April-June 2013 by davebrownz

Zimbabwe: Bolivian Workers Central (COB) condemns IST use of bourgeois courts.

The Central Obrera Boliviana COB (Bolivian Workers Central) has been informed of the criminal charges against 3 members of ISO from Zimbabwe, comrades Adonia Mulero (National Coordinator), Fortune Rera (Treasurer) and Lovemore Manjonjo (Youth Coordinator).

From the Central Obrera Boliviana we call on Mr Munyaradzi Gwisai, leader of the International Socialist Organization in Zimbabwe (member of the International Socialist Tendency), to withdraw the charges of forced entry into the office of the branch, made against the comrades that are been taken to the jails of the government of the regime of ZANU –PF- MDC; we repudiate this method within our workers organizations. And we endorse the call of the comrades to set up an International Moral Tribune to put this informer in the defendant’s seat so all that this never happens again in the workers movements.

Long liVE workers democracy!!!

Out WiTH informerS FROM workers ORGANISATIONS!!!

DEATH TO fascistS, paramilitaries and informers!!!

La Paz, November 18^th 2009

ON BEHALF OF COB Executive Committee

Three Bolivian Miners Killed - No Accident!

Yesterday (May 6, 2009) three miners were killed in Caihuasi [town near the Huanuni tin mine]. This was no accident. We hold the government of Morales and his army responsible. These deaths that the direct result of the drive for profits by the bourgeois government of Evo Morales and imperialist transnationals. Stop killing the workers!

On May 6, in the mining district of Huanuni, as they finished their shift, Coca Edwin Cucuna, 24, Julian Lajares Policarpio, 35, and Simón Rodríguez Mollinero, 38, died in a mine explosion. This tragedy happened at the 160 level (at 160 meters below ground) while preparing the site to be worked by the next shift of miners.

All the media talk of the bourgeoisie is that what happened is the result of an "accident."

This a lie! It is nothing but murder! The government of Morales which did not spend any money on maintaining the mine and the safety of miners is responsible. While the minerals, oil and other raw materials are still high on the world market, the "Bolivarian" governments like that of Morales, Chavez and the boli-burgeoisies profit from the bones, muscles and blood of workers.

Thus, while the workers hit by inflation fight for better living conditions, wages and to defend their jobs, and, like the miners of Huanuni, for a decent retirement pension, these governments have responded with brutal repression at the hands of the murderous army of Morales, or like Chavez, brutally suppressed the workers of Sidor steel workers striking for their just demands.

Bullshit! It is the workers who always pay with their lives, while the union leaders like Montes collaborate with this government and its agreement with the counterrevolutionary fascists of the Media Luna [the Eastern part of Bolivia that contains around 80% of the mineral wealth] that smashes our brothers and sisters in the East.

These leaders, Montes, Solares and Mitma [Guido Mitma, the head of the Bolivian Federation of Mining Unions] subordinate the workers organisations to the government of Morales, negotiating with the SMTMH [Sindicato Mixto de Trabajadores Mineros de Huanunian - Huanuni Miners union] an agreement whereby if the government invests in the Huanuni mine, workers will forgo a wage increase for many years!

This is a lie, there is no investment. Already they are making miners redundant and stopping production bonuses. They're just false promises! The government did not invest during the mining boom, how will it invest when mineral prices are falling! Once again trying to con miners!

Huanuni miners, like all workers in Bolivia, are super-exploited: the surplus value is torn from our labor by the national capitalists, the imperialists and the Morales government uses a small part of it to buy the services of the treacherous union leaders to control the workers and make them submit to the pact between the MAS and the fascists!

Last year Montes and Solares disarmed the miners of Caihuasi in the face of armed police repression causing the assassination of two miners and many more badly wounded. Now today they serve the greed of the capitalists to run down the conditions in the mines so that once more Huanuni goes into mourning for the dead! Stop killing the workers!

With the death of fellow miners, the SMTMH decreed a mourning period throughout the mine for 48 hours. This should become a day of mourning and protest in the whole of Bolivia to unite the workers' ranks. The Huanuni miners vanguard should again stand alongside the miners of San Cristobal, who occupied the mine of the multinational Pan American Silver, taking hostage the bosses, technicians and contractors to press their demands; and alongside the superexploited workers of the cooperatives and those thousands of miners out of work.

We must return to the Pulacayo Theses, there must be unity in the ranks of the miners vanguard:

* The sliding scale of wages and working hours to create jobs for all!

* National Congress of rank and file delegates of COMIBOL [State Owned Mines] unemployed and cooperative workers!

* To raise a militant campaign for the nationalization of all the mines, beginning with Mutún, and under workers' control!

* Any miner who does not exploit another miner can get a job in the nationalised mines and share in the gains of all miners!

* Industrialization will come from the expropriation of all the transnationals as demanded in 2003-2005!

* To win this we must fight for the resolutions of the general assemblies of the miners of Huanuni in July 2008, which declared Montes, Solares and Mitma as traitors to be implemented! Collaborators get out of the leadership of the COB [Bolivian Trade Union Central], the FSTMB [National Miners Union], and all local unions!

To build a miners militia that will strike terror in the hearts of the cowardly Santa Cruz oligarchy, the proletariat and poor peasants must break with the MAS, return to the revolutionary road of 2003-2005, re-founding the COB of 1952 together with its armed militia!

* Its Us or Them: Class against class!

* The miners will not be blackmailed with dismissals or wage cuts to pay for the crisis of the national bourgeoisie and the transnationals!

* Huanuni miners unite with all workers such as industrial workers, the teachers of La Paz, and the militant youth of the UMSA [University Mayor de San Andres in La Paz]. For a Congress of delegates of the COB, along with the poor peasants and militant students fighting to rebuild the 1952 COB militia!

The hundreds of miners who have been killed in the mines of Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Latin America, Africa and Asia are the martyrs of the international working class. Their blood stains the banner of the many millions of immigrant workers and and low paid workers in the U.S. and the imperialist powers of Europe, the workers of the former workers' states now exploited by the former Stalinist bureaucracy reborn as a new exploiting class.

Raise the bloody flag of these martyrs to workers everywhere! Throughout the world the working class has begun its battle against the capitalist parasites: the workers of Madagascar, the militant workers and youth of Greece, France, Guadeloupe and Martinique and the former states workers!

International Trotskyist League (LTI)
Of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction
May 7, 2009

May Day message to the world working class from South Africa

The handful of capitalist parasites are plunging the over 5 billion working class and fellow poor, into the abyss. For several decades there has been no real productive growth in the world economy. The control of the world by monopoly capitalism (imperialism), as demonstrated by so-called Anglo Boer war 1899-1903, ushered in an era of wars, civil wars and revolutions.


Today is no different: over 80% of the world's arable land is under the direct control of the world's monopolies- thus they are in a position to shift their burden of falling profits onto the working class- the capitalists know that we can do without many things, but we must eat. Thus the drive by capital through increased prices in food, transport and housing. Thus we have the massive increased attacks by the capitalist class to lower wages and to retrench millions more.

Around the world, the working class is resisting these attacks.

The uprisings in Guadaloupe, Martinique, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Greece are all signs that the working class is starting to go on the march, to resist the crisis of capitalism being placed on the shoulders of the masses.

The monopoly capitalists are attempting with various strategies to control the working class. In South America and South Africa, they use Popular Fronts (alliances of capitalist parties with the trade unions) to control the masses. When uprisings occur here, the popular fronts increasingly use the fascist jackboot. In the last year fascists took over half of Bolivia. The so-called socialist Morales, allowed the peasants and workers to be massacred; the Morales regime brutally put down a strike by the Huanuni miners- some were killed. The bolivarian regime of Venezuela and the popular front of Lula in Brasil supported a pact with the fascists that has in effect divided the country into half- giving control in part to the fascists. There are some activists in South Africa and elsewhere who want to import the bolivarian regime. This will be a huge mistake.

In South Africa, the crisis of housing reflects the start of the resistance of the working class to the attacks by the capitalists; from Delft, Grassy park, to the Durban Abahlali to Kliptown and Alexandra, the working class has started the resistance; these fights for housing for all and jobs for all needs to be placed on the agenda of all unions so that the unemployed and employed workers join in common fight with common fighting committees (the fights against retrenchment and against high prices also needs to be placed on the agenda of all unions). But without a decisive change in leadership of the unions the working class will be left isolated in struggle. Thus the fight to put broader struggles on the agenda of the unions, it is important to build action committees of employed and unemployed workers, which unite the struggles against high prices, for housing, against retrenchment and for jobs for all. These workers committees should spearhead the resistance to the capitalist onslaught.

There has been growing international support for the scrapping of the sentences of the Kliptown 5 (activists who were sentenced for alleged public violence when the masses rose up for houses 2 years ago- these activists received 2 year suspended sentences. In Kliptown there is a huge squatter camp next to the multi million rand white elephant called Freedom Charter square and a 4 star Holiday Inn. Messages of support have been received from the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLT) [which has a presence in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Brasil and New Zealand; the FLT has spearheaded the campaign in South America and New Zealand in defence of the Kliptown 5 which has resulted in messages being received from the Federal University Local in Cochabamba, Bolivia, from the heroic workers of the Brukman factory in Argentina [the workers took over the factory by force when the bosses unilaterally closed it] and from the Central Union of Bolivia (COB)- the message is appended below.

The FLT and WIVL have begun a process of joint programmatic work and discussions with a view to uniting the revolutionary fighters from South America, New Zealand and South Africa. This is but part of the same process of the fight for the rebuilding of the Fourth International. Without the coming together of the vanguard working class fighters from the imperialist centres, from Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, from China, from all the former deformed workers states and the colonies and neo-colonies, the struggle to defeat the capitalist offensive will yield only temporary gains. The WIVL makes a call for all principled working class fighters and groups to join with us in the fight to turn the current offensive of capitalism-imperialism into an offensive by the working class, in the life and death struggle, for Socialism.

This is our short and brief message to the world working class, on Mayday 2009.

--
Shaheed Mahomed, Secretary, Workers International Vanguard League
1st Floor, Community House, 41 Salt River rd., Salt River, South Africa 7925
ph 0822020617, fax 0880214476777
workersinternational@gmail.com
web www.workersinternational.org.za

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Central Obrera Boliviana

To the comrades of the WIVL (Workers International Vanguard League) and the 4 activists sentenced for their participation in struggle for better housing and living conditions of the people.

Comrades

The workers of the Bolivian affiliates of the COB (Central Obrera Boliviana) hereby present our moral and material support for the cause that you are struggling for and which today has led to the imprisonment of your cadre, who are victims of demagogy, which is a worse form of fascism and veiled iron fist against whomsoever encourages people to stand up for their rights, a struggle we have been busy with since 1955 when we were formed; such social responsibility as housing is today is being neglected by those representatives and defenders of capitalism- they have only one response and that is to criminalise the struggle of those activists who are reclaiming this right to housing, etc.

We, together with yourselves, have only one way to fight against those who greedily cling to power for the benefit of a few while on the other hand the masses are claiming their rights; we dare not lose hope or abandon our struggle and in the spirit of workers internationalism we most energetically raise our condemnation, our protest against the ANC government of South Africa, who is abandoning the people and imprisoning those who reclaim their basic rights.

Comrades, the way forward of our struggle is clear: for a socialist revolution!

DEATH TO THE DEFENDORS OF CAPITALISM!

VIVA THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKERS!

FOR THE COMPLETE FREEDOM OF THOSE WHO ARE IMPRISONED FOR DEMANDING DECENT SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND BETTER CONDITIONS OF LIVING!

VIVA THE SOUTH AFRICAN WORKING CLASS!

DOWN WITH THE ANC GOVERNMENT OF SOUTH AFRICA!

VIVA WIVL!

La Paz 22 April 2009

Bolivia: Open Letter from the LTI to the POR*

From Class Struggle 81 Nov08/Jan09

Build a united front of struggle of all the militant workers’, peasants’ and students’ organizations to take the COB and COR** out of the hands of the servants of big business and their government, and re-open the revolutionary road of 2003-2005!


It has already been proven that the policy of using the COB and COR as pressure groups on parliament to make petitions to change the laws has been a total failure. The only thing that parliament has voted for is Morales’ constitution, the fascists of Santa Cruz and the transnational companies.

Today our workers organizations are subordinated to the bourgeoisie and its government in the Altiplano and attacked by fascism in the East. The Trotskyist Internationalist League appeals to the POR and all the organizations that call for a break from the bourgeoisie and the government, to confront fascism by reviving the Pulacayo Theses of the Bolivian workers, to form with great urgency, a common struggle front, that can open a road different from the collaborationist bureaucracy of the COB for the vast majority of the Bolivian working class.

This call must organize, without delay, a united offensive of all the workers organizations, to demand the immediate replacing of the collaborationist leadership of the COB and the convening of a Congress of delegates of the rank and file of all workers, poor peasants and revolutionary students organizations, to retake the road to the revolution opened in 1003-2005 by exploited masses of Bolivia.

The POR has an enormous influence in the vanguard of the workers and students. This must not be used to give Trotskyist “blessings” to whichever union bureaucrats are prepared to betray the working class. Nor is it enough for POR to teach the lessons of the Theses of Pulacayo and the sliding scales of wages and working hours without a the rest of the Transitional Program to fight for a Workers and Peasants Government.

“Revolutionary violence” as proposed by the POR, is not a program. The fascist counterrevolution has smashed our worker and poor peasant brothers and sisters in the Media Luna. Will they be able to miraculously break from the leadership of Montes, Patana and the other agents of the popular front and the bourgeoisie? No way! We must unite all the workers, poor farmers and student organizations to vote for the immediate formation of workers and peasants militias, as in the '52, to smash the fascists and destroy the Banzerist murderous officer caste.

Enough! The fascists operate in Santa Cruz without fear of reprisal and in broad daylight. We must initiate a drive in the unions and fighting workers organizations a massive recruitment of workers, poor farmers and students, to build a workers and farmers militia to march on Santa Cruz to smash fascism.

There is no time to lose. The differences that we have with POR and other organizations that claim to be Trotskyists in Bolivia are clear and deep and have already been debated publicly before the masses. But we do not make these differences an obstacle in uniting in a common front to face the life and death matters that confront the Bolivian workers and poor farmers. Already the call for a united front has been met with enthusiasm by hundreds of thousands of workers, poor farmers and revolutionary students eager to break their subordination to the class collaborationist government of Morales and the transnationals, and to fight the fascist attacks of the Santa Cruz oligarchy and British Petroleum and the Banderista officer caste as in Pando.

Without a doubt, the miners of Huanuni have responded to this call and with them the Bolivian miners’ movement. So have the militant vanguard of the teachers unions, the industrial workers of La Paz, the pensioners and all those unions that fight against rising prices which were brutally repressed by Morales army. The workers of Plan 3000 refuse to be isolated and surrounded by the fascists with their sticks and pistols and have raised their battle cry to settle accounts with the “little white bums” that, everyday, terrorise our workers and farmers.

The Internationalist Trotskyist League of Bolivia, a member of the FLT, will take these proposals and this program to all the workers’ where we are active to get their support for these resolutions. To succeed it is necessary to defeat all the collaborationist leaders of the COB that currently subordinate the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. This is the number 1 and most urgent task at the moment. Only in this way can the exploited stand up to fight starting with the most basic and pressing demands.

It is clear that the haste with which the pact between the popular front and fascism was rushed through against the masses is motivated by the exploiters need to solve their world crisis and the bankruptcy of imperialism on the back of the oppressed masses and to contain a workers counter-offensive.

The working class must rise up against this offensive! It is necessary for the rank and file of to take control of the COB! It is necessary to re-open the road to the workers and farmers revolution, because for the workers and poor farmers to live, world capitalism and imperialism must die!

There is no doubt that the Bolivian working class has been surrounded by the Bolivarian bourgeoisie and the treacherous leaders of the World Social Forum, which subordinates it to the bourgeoisie. The survival of the workers and poor farmers’ revolution in Bolivia, now contained and expropriated, must be reclaimed. It is necessary to confront and expose the scam and sham of the "Bolivarian Revolution" which is nothing but a parody of a revolution. Its true purpose is to deceive the masses into supporting the governments of the national bourgeoisie and their business partners of the various imperialist powers, which are disputing among themselves over the loot of the nations of Latin America.

The worker and farmer masses of Peru have already entered a phase of semi-insurrections against the Fujimorist regime and the pro-Yankee government of Alan Garcia. Rebellious Chilean youth, with their shout of “the red cops are the dangerous ones”, have entered a heroic struggle to defeat the reformist leaders who hold back each step of the masses.

The masses of the American continent need to stand in unity with the workers and poor farmers revolution in Bolivia, at a critical point when the national bourgeoisies, Bolivarian or not, and allied to the imperialist transnationals are already preparing for a massive attack against the workers who refuse to pay for the crisis of the rotten bankrupt capitalist imperialist system.

The Bolivian workers and farmers do not have the revolutionary leadership they deserve able to prove to them that their true allies are not the national bourgeois partners of Totalfina and Repsol but the Latin American and world-wide working class, already entering enormous class struggles for food and survival. Long live the Bolivian working class; long live the international working class!


*From the International Trotskyist League to the Revolutionary Workers’ Party.

** COB and COR are Bolivian Workers Central and Regional Workers Central i.e. the main union organisation.