Bolivia and the Permanent Revolution

 

                Bolivian workers and peasants declare a General Strike

 Revolution and Counter-revolution

 Bolivia today is more than two months into a General Strike which has united the working masses as never before.  It has become the key Latin American front in the war of aggression by declining US imperialism against the rising Chinese imperialism. The US, facing defeats in its wars against Russia in Ukraine and against Iran to isolate and weaken China, has under Trump recognized the need to consolidate its hold over Latin America and drive Russia and China out of the hemisphere. Its main target is the Bolivarian group of states in ALBA, in particular, Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia, to reverse the grip China and Russia have on important economic resources in the region, particularly hydrocarbons and lithium. 

This class war front pits the two important factions of the national bourgeoisie against the miners, poor peasants and street traders. The first faction aligned to the imperialist US is its comprador bourgeois allies made up of the oligarchy of wealthy landowners and business people whose mission is to reverse the Bolivarian reforms of the last two decades under the MAS. The second faction is that of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie of the MAS 'Andean Socialism' that takes advantage of the opportunities opened up by state owned property, and in the name of socialism, draws the petty bourgeoisie and workers into a popular front with China and Russia. 

On the other side of the class divide are the historically rebellious miners, poor peasants, urban workers and small traders that have united in a General Strike to bring down the Paz regime and halt the privatisation of state assets.  For the first time in Bolivian history the working people are challenging the popular front created by the COB bureaucracy to stop the strike spreading beyond a deal between the Bolivarian bourgeoisie and the pro-US Paz regime. Within the popular assemblies a new leadership is emerging that recognises that both wings of the national bourgeoisie have a common interest to smash the General Strike which means that the General Strike must go beyond a regime change to the seizure of power and the installation of a Workers' and Peasants' Government in Bolivia.  

To prevent this revolutionary threat spreading in Latin America and challenging its hegemony over its rivals in Latin America, the US has to defeat the resistance of the formidable working masses. In Cuba the deformed workers’ state capitulated to US embargos and restored capitalism in 2011.  In Venezuela the Bolivarian bourgeoisie passively accepted Trump’s ‘decapitation’ strike to restore US control of hydrocarbons by handing over President Maduro and blocking any armed resistance by the popular militias. 

 Bolivia, itself, however, poses a larger problem. The US and its wealthy bourgeois allies in Santa Cruz, are using the election of Paz to reverse the inroads that Morales and the MAS made between 2006 to 2025 to nationalise land and resources intended to finance rising living standards for the petty bourgeois and workers. To understand the size of the problem we have to show how Bolivia today is the result of a history made by revolutions and counter-revolutions coming into play today as the capitalist world economy is facing its terminal crisis.

1952: The unfinished bourgeois revolution

 The miners revolution in 1952 was betrayed by the POR (Workers Revolutionary Party) which controlled the leadership of the COB (Bolivian Workers Centre). The armed miners took power by defeating the military which was then disbanded. That power was neutralized when the COB leadership under Lechin made a deal with the popular front MNR {National Revolutionary movement) government to appoint miners as ministers to influence the government policy. This allowed the MNR to limit its national democratic program to land reform and the nationalisation of the mines both of which are key demands of the national democratic revolution.  

This outcome was no accident in 1952. First, US imperialism was embarking on a world-wide campaign against Russian and Chinese ‘communism’. It needed popular front governments in Latin America to join the war against ‘communism’. At the same time the international left succumbed as Stalinists or ‘fellow travelers’ to the reformist theory of the two-stage revolution. This theory said it was necessary to first complete the bourgeois democratic revolution in order to prepare the conditions for the socialist revolution.   

 The Fourth International under Trotsky’s leadership had broken with Stalinism, yet after his death degenerated and succumbed to Stalinism. Both the International Secretariat and the International Committee turned their backs on the permanent revolution to tail the Stalinist stageism. Under its leader Lora the POR along with the whole 4th international, apart from the US Vern and Ryan faction of the US SWP, succumbed to stageism as 'national Trotskyism',  doing a deal with the “progressive” bourgeoisie for land reform and the nationalisation of the mines.

As Jose Villa in The Revolution of ‘52  points out, the  MNR regime led by Paz Estenssoro was a popular front between workers and the bourgeoisie, in effect bourgeois government. Estenssoro was a former Bolivian cabinet minister and reserve bank governor. Like most of his ilk he was a convinced anti-communist. The POR betrayal of revolutionary Trotskyism allowed the pro-US MNR to trap the COB into disarming itself in exchange for miners being appointed as government ministers to advance the workers program - by sharing power with the bourgeoisie! 

Inevitably this revolutionary defeat entrenched the landowner oligarchy of Santa Cruz and froze the bourgeois revolution in time and space. For 6 years Estenssoro acted as a Bonaparte figure ‘balancing’ the  two antagonistic classes in the popular front MNR, as did Cardenas in Mexico in the 1930s and Peron in Argentine in the 1940s. In all cases where the popular front failed to subdue the revolutionary uprisings of the workers and peasants they were met with US backed fascist coups.  

The most recent of those uprisings from 2000 to 2003 was at a time when the US was embarking on the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Venezuela it was trying to reverse Chavez's rise to power. The fall of the US backed regime in Bolivia in 2003 and the election of Morales’ government in 2005 also coincided with the onset of the global terminal crisis. The rise of China and Russia as emerging imperialist powers intensified the great power rivalry. There was now the potential for the national bourgeoisies long dominated by  US hegemony to be attracted to the doing deals with its Russia and China rivals in the belief that they win better terms with their ‘win-win’ trade deals.  

 The arrival of these two new imperialist powers, allowed one faction of the national bourgeoisie to join a supposedly ‘progressive’ popular front with them against the US. They aligned to the BRICS as the main alternative to the US/NATO. The delusion that national capitalists can avoid dealing with imperialism in the BRICS was reinforced with the rise of the Bolivarian ALBA and celebrated by the reformist left. Castrismo, Chavismo and Evismo became Bonapartist currents sustaining the popular front with Russia and China and dominating the left discourse. The struggle of the masses to transcend the aborted national democratic revolution, and make the revolution permanent, remains trapped until workers and poor farmers break these  international popular fronts with the national bourgeoisies and Russia and China

 How the global terminal crisis impacts Bolivia

 In the 21st century the tectonic shift in international great power rivalry is the inevitable result of the global terminal crisis and the intensified inter-international rivalry for raw materials and cheap labor. The competition for scarce resources is driven by the crisis and strongly impacts Bolivia’s economic development and its class struggle.  In Bolivia each imperialist bloc deals with a faction of the national bourgeoisie collaborating with it to extract super profits from the workers and peasants. The US is allied to the Santa Cruz large landowners and businesses opposed to confiscation of their land and for the privatisation of all public land and resources including lithium.  China and Russia are allied to the MAS and the small coca farmers opposed to the loss of their land and businesses, and support the nationalisation of all major resources particularly lithium. 

 Workers and petty bourgeoisie are aligned to these capitalist factions by the nature of their material interests. Many petty bourgeois have become disguised workers, self employed or employed by international corporations and cartels (coca peasants and small vendors and artisanal miners) and look to both imperialist blocs to finance reforms in mining, land use etc, to their benefit. Morales' “Andean Capitalism” was to be financed by state owned lithium deposits, developed by China (CBC) and Russia (Rosatom). Meanwhile, these projects have been suspended by Paz while the US finds more suitable candidates who will be rewarded with full private property rights.   

 This is the Bolivarian program devised by Chavez that links the Bolivarian states together with imperialist China and Russia, and is violently opposed by the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie and its fascist paramilitaries. Nevertheless, the main class enemy of workers and poor peasants is the MAS bourgeoisie with its links to China and Russia. Apart from failing to deliver economic growth it cannot deliver workers’ democracy' and 'socialist planning'. China for all its ‘win-win’ talk of fair shares, imposes a national debt burden on workers and peasants equal to that of the US. Worse, the popular front blocks the two classes that have a common interest in socialist revolution from uniting and overthrowing the bourgeois state to complete the national revolution as part of the global permanent revolution.

 We cannot even begin to create a revolutionary program for a Bolivian workers’ revolution without recognising inter-imperialist wars, sanctions, regime change and blockades as an attack on workers' lives.  Imperialism in terminal crisis must attempt to unload its crisis onto the backs of workers and poor farmers. Any revolutionary nucleus has to warn workers that the Bolivarian states will not break from the international popular front with imperialist China. 

 The class struggle is international. The class line runs though all the nation states, oppressors and oppressed, East and West, North and South. In West Asia. Iran is winning the war against the US and Israel with the support of Russia and China. In Africa, you can see the struggle for national independence in the Sahel against the US and NATO is backed by Russia and China. In Latin America the ALBA unites the Bolivarian states from Cuba to Bolivia with imperialist China and Russia against the US. If Russia and China are backing all these oppressed states against the US/NATO, we have to explain why is it necessary for workers, peasants and other oppressed people to break from the popular front and make a revolution against Russia and China!

 Who will make the Revolution Permanent?

 A workers and peasants revolution is necessary against all the imperialist powers West and East. Whatever the level of development and class relations, imperialism makes working people pay for its terminal crisis. Russia and China have no interest in real socialism as their interest is to make profits from the labor of the working class. Real socialism begins with the fight for bourgeois democracy where that advances the workers and poor peasants revolutionary cause.

 We give critical support to Iran, Venezuela, the AES in Africa and Bolivia and any other regime that suffers an imperialist attack. We can militarily defend these bourgeois regimes fight for national sovereignty while at the same time warning that they will sell out to imperialism rather then face a revolution. In Bolivia we give critical, military support to MAS governments under attack by the US without giving any political support. In the event of the US and Russia/China bloc fighting a war over Bolivia we say: defeat both! Victory for the Bolivian permanent revolution! 

 The bourgeois revolution in Latin America was never completed, as indigenous peoples, poor peasants, self-employed and unemployed were suppressed by popular front governments like the MNR or repressed by the military coups that followed. The MNR paved the way for the fascist generals by defeating the 1952 revolution that put miners in power. As we van see in Venezuela the interests of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie is to extract super profits on behalf of imperialism at the expense of workers and peasants. The working poor know from experience that their living standards are driven down to create imperialist super profits. They have a life and death interest in throwing imperialists and their comprador servants out of the country. 

 Only the working class and the poor peasants can overthrow a bourgeois regime. But for this to happen there must be a revolutionary nucleus based on a program for permanent revolution to lead the vanguard. We have seen how attempts at revolution were subverted by Stalinist and centrist Trotskyist parties that formed popular fronts with the bourgeoisie. The POR took over the COB leadership to advocate joining the bourgeois MNR. This allowed the government to smash the miners' political power. Six years later the landowners staged a coup to abolish state owned property. Not until the MAS office won in 2005 did the  bloc with workers and peasants prevail to force the nationalisation of basic resources. Now that the fascist regime is legislating to privatize state property once again, who will stop them? 

 The answer is those who have formed and defended a General Strike for more than two months. The miners, factory workers, indigenous and other poor peasants united in the union centre, the COB, and in the community general assemblies, are demanding that the Paz government must fall. It is they who condemn the bureaucratic leadership of sections of the COB who have entered into an agreement with Paz for wage rises and food subsidies, and union shareholding in the profits of lithium mines. It is they who condemn the bureaucracy traitors, and defend the General Strike against the State of Emergency until the Paz regime falls. It is they who see this as not the end of the struggle, but the beginning of the permanent revolution.  

 The capitulation of the COB leadership, and the Bolivarian left, replays the events of 1952 and the defeat of that revolution. It drags in the mud the proud record of militant miners who for decades fought the privatizing of the mines with their bodies. Today, however, the popular assemblies exist as a powerful influence against the corrupt COB bureaucracy. They demand that the COB ranks must take back control of the union leadership and repudiate the agreement. It must continue the General Strike to the end, bring down the Paz regime, and clear the road for a workers’ and poor farmers’ government! 

 Transform the COB into a soviet-like organisation with workers’ democracy!

Unite the class conscious ranks of the COB and the General Assembly of the FEJUVES {neighborhood councils of El Alto) to form a mass revolutionary party with a revolutionary program! 

• NO CONFIDENCE IN THE MAS, AND ANY OTHER ‘SOCIALIST’ PARTY WHOSE PROGRAM CALLS FOR POLITICAL BLOCKS WITH THE BOUGEOISIE AND IMPERIALISTS IN THE NAME OF ‘SOCIALISM’!
• FOR A NEW WORLD PARTY OF SOCIALISM BASED ON THE THEORY AND PROGRAM OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL OF TROTSKY!.
• OUT WITH THE US, NATO, RUSSIA AND CHINA IMPERIALISTS!
• DOWN WITH THE BOLIVARIAN BOUGEOISIE! 
• BUILD PERMANENT STRIKE COMMITTEES ! 
• ARMED MILITIAS UNDER WORKERS CONTROL!
• WORKERS’, POOR FARMERS AND SOLDIERS COMMITTEES!
• ALL POWER TO THE WORKERS’ AND POOR FARMERS GOVERNMENT
• NATIONALISE THE LAND! 
• EXPROPRIATE  IMPERIALIST AND NATIONAL BOURGEOIS PROPERTY WITHOUT COMPENSATION, INCLUDING LARGE LAND HOLDINGS,  PRIVATE MINES etc.
• STATE OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION, EXCHANGE AND DISTRIBUTION
• FOR A SOCIALIST BOLIVIA IN A SOCIALIST FEDERATION OF THE AMERICAS!