[Marxism] J. Petras (Counterpunch): The Bankers Can Rest Easy -- Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

http://www.counterpunch.org/petras01042006.html

January 4, 2006
The Bankers Can Rest Easy
Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?
By JAMES PETRAS
A A realistic assessment of the electoral victory of Evo Morales
requires knowledge of his recent role in Bolivia's popular struggles,
his program and ideology as well as the first measures adopted by his
regime.

[...]

Once again in Bolivia we have a popular leader elected to power. Once
again we have an army of uncritical left cheerleaders, ignorant of
significant facts and policy changes over the last 5 years.

Evo Morales' margin of victory, 54 per cent against 29 per cent for
his closest opponent exceeded that of any prior president in half a
century. His party, the MAS (Movement to Socialism) gained a majority
in the lower house, and a near majority in the Senate, and won 3 out
of 9 governorships, despite the fact that the Electoral Council
eliminated nearly one million registered voters (mostly
peasant-Indian voters for Morales) on technicalities Morales won all
the major cities (except Santa Cruz, bulwark of the extreme right)
and exceeded 65 per cent in many rural and urban impoverished
regions. Morales and the MAS won despite the opposition of all the
major electronic and print media, the business and mine owners
associations and the heavy-handed intervention and threats of the US
embassy. In this case US business opposition to Evo added to his
popular support and resulted in a record turnout.

[...]

The general response from left, center and right wing regimes to
Morales' victory was positive. Congratulatory greetings were sent by
Fidel, Chavez, Zapatero (Spain), Chirac (France) and Wolfowitz (of
the World Bank). The US took an ambiguous position. Rice's guarded
praise of electoral politics was accompanied by the predictable
warning to rule by "democratic methods" (i.e. to follow US
directives). Meantime shortly after the election, the US Special
Forces based in Paraguay began military exercises on the frontier
with Bolivia. The major oil companies (Repsol, Petrobras etc)
expressed their willingness to work with the new president (if he
would abide by the rules of their game). In the meantime, they
announced that new investments were being held up.

The leaders of the major labor confederations, the Bolivian Workers
Confederation (COB), the Mineworkers Confederation, the barrio
confederations of El Alto (a proletarian city of 800,000 near La Paz)
took a cautious "wait and see" attitude, demanding that his first
measures include the nationalization of the petroleum and gas
companies and the convocation of a constitutional convention. Despite
the reticence of these leaders, even in supporting Evo's election,
the great mass of their followers voted overwhelmingly for Morales.

In summary, except for the US, there was a broad spectrum of support
for Evo's victory from Big Business to the unemployed, from the World
Bank to the barefoot Indians of the Andes, each with their own
reading and expectations of what policies an Evo Morales presidency
and a MAS dominated congress would pursue.

There are at least two views on what to expect from an Evo Morales
Presidency, which cross ideological boundaries.

The exuberant left and sectors of the far right (especially in the US
and Bolivia) evoke a scenario in which a radical leftist Indian
President, responding to the great majority of poor Bolivians will
transform Bolivia from a white oligarchic-imperialist dominated
country based on a neo-liberal economy, to an Indian-peasant-workers'
state pursuing an independent foreign policy, the nationalization of
the petroleum industry, a profound agrarian reform and the defense of
the coca farmers. This is the view of 95 per cent of the Left and the
view of the extreme-right including the Bush Administration.

An alternative scenario, the one I hold, sees Morales as a moderate
social liberal politician who has over the past five years moved to
the center. He will not nationalize petrol or gas MNCs, but will
probably renegotiate a moderate increase on their taxes, and
"nationalize" the subsoil minerals, leaving the companies free to
extract, transport and market the minerals. He will promote three
variants of capitalism: Protection of small and medium size
businesses, invitations to foreign investors and financing of state
petroleum and mining firms as junior partners of the MNCs. To
compensate and stabilize his regime he will appoint a number of
popular leaders to government posts dealing with labor and social
welfare with limited budgets who will be subject to the economic and
financial ministries run by liberal economists. Morales will promote
and fund Indian cultural celebrations. He will promote Indian
language use in Andean schools and at public functions. "Land reform"
will not involve any expropriations of plantations but will involve
colonization projects in unsettled or uncultivated lands. Coca
farming will be legalized but reduced to less than half an acre per
family. Drug trafficking will be outlawed. Morales will propose to
work with the US DEA against trafficking and money laundering

A wealth of data and facts pertinent to evaluating the two scenarios
is abundantly available to anyone interested in making an informed
judgment in which direction Evo Morales will take:

Even before taking office Morales gave the green light to the
privatization of MUTUN, one of the biggest iron mining fields in the
world (Econoticias 25/12/2005). In late 2005, private bidding, under
very questionable circumstances, was underway among several competing
MNCs. The outgoing President, Rodriguez, consulted two leading
congressmen of the MAS and agreed to suspend the bidding, in
deference to the incoming Morales government. Morales and his
neo-liberal vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, over-ruled and
reprimanded the Congressional leaders and their parliamentarian
advisers and told President Rodriguez to proceed with the private
bidding of MUTUN. The mine has 40 billion tons in iron reserves and
10 billion tons of magnesium reserves (70 per cent of the world
total). In the lead up to his unilateral decision to continue,
Morales bent to pressure from right-wing pro-imperialist business
interests of Santa Cruz and ignored ecologists, trade unionists and
nationalists who opposed corrupt bidding. He also ignored ecological,
workers' nationalist interests.

While the ill-informed leftists boosters of Evo picture him as the
revolutionary leader of the Bolivian masses, they ignore the fact
that he played no role in the insurrections of October, 2003, and
May-June, 2005. During the general strikes and street battles of
October, Evo was in Europe at an inter-parliamentary meeting in
Geneva discussing the virtues of parliamentary politics. Meanwhile,
scores of Bolivians were being massacred by the electoral regime of
Sanchez de Losada for opposing his policies on foreign ownership of
petro-gas interests. Morales returned in time to celebrate the
overthrow of Sanchez de Losada and to convince a half-million
protesters to accept neo-liberal Vice President Carlos Mesa as the
new president. Less than two years later, another wave of strikes and
barricades led to the overthrow of Mesa for continuing Sanchez de
Losada's oil policy. Once again Morales stepped in to direct the
uprising into institutional channels, proposing a Supreme Court Judge
to serve as interim president while new presidential elections were
convoked. Morales succeeded in taking the peoples' struggle out of
the street and dismantling the nascent popular councils and
channeling them into established bourgeois institutions. In both
crises, Evo favored a neo-liberal replacement in opposition to the
peoples' demands for a new popularly controlled national assembly.

During the Presidency of Mesa, Evo supported the latter's referendum
(2004) which left the foreign MNCs in control of the oil and gas
subject to a small increase in royalty payments. Though parts of the
referendum passed, it was later repudiated by the mass
insurrectionary movement.

In the run-up to the presidential elections, Morales-Garcia Linera's
(Vice-President) slate spoke a "triple discourse": to the urban and
trade union crowds they spoke of "Andean Socialism", to the Indians
in the highlands they spoke of "Andean Capitalism", to the business
leaders they said socialism was not on the agenda for at least 50 to
100 years. In private meetings with the US Ambassador, Bolivian
oligarchs and bankers and the MNCs, Morales/Garcia Linera eschewed
all intentions to nationalize ? on the contrary they welcomed foreign
investment as long as it was "transparent". By that they meant that
the MNC's paid their taxes, and didn't bribe regulators. The message
to the masses lacked specifics; the speeches to the business elites
were backed by concrete agreements.

Evo and his Vice-President Linera have promised to retain the tight
fiscal and macro economic policies of their predecessors and to
maintain all the illegally privatized companies. Evo's economic
spokesperson, Carlos Villegas, stated that President Morales will
"derogate in a symbolic fashion the decree which privatized
enterprises" ? but added it will "not have any retroactive effects".
Symbolic gestures of a purely rhetorical nature, devoid of
nationalist substance, seem to be the path chosen by Morales and
Linera.

The incoming President/Vice-President have categorically stated the
new government will not expropriate any large private monopolies or
large landholdings, nor foreign investments. On January 13, 2006 Evo
travels to Brazil to discuss with big Brazilian corporations new
investments in gas, petrochemicals, oil and other raw materials.
According to the Brazilian financial daily Valor (Dec. 26, 2005),
Lula will offer state loans and insist that Evo creates a "climate of
stability for investments". The giant Brazilian corporation PETROBRAS
pays less than 15 per cent in taxes on the daily extraction of 25
million cubic meters of natural gas, at prices far below
international levels. Lula hopes to use "aid" to deepen and extend
Brazil's MNC low cost exploitation of valuable energy sources.
Meanwhile gas sold in La Paz is three times more expensive than in
Sao Paolo.

Evo promises to "tax the rich" knowing full well that any new taxes
on low income groups would provoke a major uprising as took place in
2004. However the tax proposed on property valued at $300,000 or
$400,000 will exclude the vast majority of the upper middle class and
all but one percent of the very rich. As a source of revenue it will
make a negligible impact, but the "symbolic" propaganda value will be
immense.

Regarding peasant demands, Evo's agrarian commission has not come up
with any specific targets for agrarian reform, (neither the number of
acres to be distributed nor any lists of landless family
beneficiaries).

While his local and international supporters emphasize his "popular"
and Indian origins (the "face of Indo-America"), there is no
discussion of his support for big business, his agreements, with the
pro-imperialist Civic Committee for Santa Cruz, PETROBRAS and the
other petro-gas MNCs. What is crucial is not Evo's militancy during
the 1980s and 1990s but his alliances, deals and program on his way
to the Presidency.

All the data on Evo Morales' politics, especially since 2002, point
to a decided right turn, from mass struggle to electoral politics, a
shift toward operating inside Congress and with institutional elites.
Evo has turned from supporting popular uprisings to backing one or
another neo-liberal President. His style is populist, his dress
informal. He speaks the language of the people. He is photogenic,
personable and charismatic. He mixes well with street venders and
visits the homes of the poor. But what political purpose do all these
populist gestures and symbols serve? His anti-neo-liberal rhetoric
will not have any meaning if he invites more foreign investors to
plunder iron, gas, oil, magnesium and other prime materials. Systemic
transformations do not follow from upholding illegal privatizations,
the maintenance of the financial and business elites of La Paz and
Cochabamba and the agro-business oligarchy of Santa Cruz.

At best, Evo will promote some marginal increases in property and
royalty taxes, and perhaps increase some social spending on welfare
services (but always limited by a tight fiscal budget). Political
power will be shared between the new upwardly mobile petit bourgeois
of the MAS office holders and the old economic oligarchs. No doubt
diplomatic relations will greatly improve with Cuba and Venezuela.
Relations with the World Bank and the IMF will remain unchanged --
unless the Cuban-American mafia in Washington push their extremist
agenda. While any aggression is possible with the fascist-thinking
policy makers in command in Washington, it is also possible, given
Morales' de facto liberal policies, that the State Department may opt
for pressuring Evo to move further to the right and to make further
concessions to big business and coca cultivation reduction.
Unfortunately, the Left will continue to respond to symbols, mythical
histories, political rhetoric and gestures and not to programmatic
substance, historical experiences and concrete socio-economic
policies.



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