[Marxism] Bolivia discussion

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I hope the moderator allows the Bolivia thread to continue. Like
many others on this list, I'm sure, I have found it one of the
best discussions in months if not years. And one of the clearest,
if for no other reason than the fact that it exposes the damage
done to so many comrades from caricatural Trotskyism, misreadings
of (Marx's) "theory" of permanent revolution, etc.

I have been content so far to allow Joaquín Bustelo, Fred Feldman,
Néstor Gorojovsky and a few others speak for positions that I
would generally support. They do so better than I could. But there
is one simple point nagging at me as I read the list contributions
and other articles, blogs, etc. on the Bolivia situation:

You have a situation in which a party with a basic
anti-imperialist program, representing the indigenous majority of
the country, wins a smashing electoral victory over a divided
bourgeois opposition widely discredited for its complicity with
its imperialist overlords, and immediately, with the enthusiastic
support and material assistance of the Cuban and Venezuelan
leaderships, promises to set in motion an agenda of basic social
and, yes, national reforms - Joaquín's summary list is a good
one - while, according to even Evo Morales' staunchest critics,
there is a powerful, mobilized mass movement that wants to go even
further and faster than Evo is promising at this point. What a
favourable situation in which to advance the social revolution,
which at this point and I expect for a long time to come naturally
assumes the primary form of a national revolution.

If nothing else, think of the contrast with Che's situation in
1967: isolated, without the support of parties or trade unions,
surrounded by the enemy, unable to speak the language of the local
population, hunted down like animals. Yes, in Bolivia.

Let's recall that in Venezuela, Hugo Chávez and his supporters
have had to work diligently for years now to build a mass movement
in support of his reform program. I am not aware of any huge
social forces pushing on Chávez from the left, while, in contrast,
the national bourgeoisie in Venezuela still holds many of the
commanding heights in the economy, the mass media, even the state
bureaucracy.

It seems to me that in Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in
the hemisphere yet so rich in natural resources, with a population
that has a militant tradition of revolutionary struggle within
living memory, in a context today of a developing solidarity bloc
of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that is in open,
deepening revolt, to varying degrees, against the imperialist
colossus to the north, the perspective for revolutionary struggle
and advance is a very positive one.

Whatever the past record of Evo Morales and the MAS in relation to
recent struggles around gas and water, popular assemblies, etc. -
and I for one don't assume that decisions they made at the time
were incorrect simply because they may have represented tactical
retreats with a view to resuming or continuing the struggle on
other fronts or at more propitious moments - there is a
substantial amount of evidence that the new leaders of Bolivia can
and will themselves develop in a dialectical relationship of
learning from and contributing to the mass movements propelling
the process forward. Isn't that what we have seen over the years
in Cuba and Venezuela, to mention only those? Already, the party
whose candidate is about to assume the presidency calls itself a
"movement for socialism".

The revolutionary process now under way in Venezuela is teaching
us much about the whole problematic of transitional regimes, as,
for an earlier generation (that includes me) Cuba did, and
continues to do. The process within each social (state) formation
is unique in important ways. Events in Bolivia in the coming
months and years will teach us all a lot more about the mutual
interrelationship of the national, indigenous and socialist
revolutions in Latin America. Old schemas and stereotypes are of
no use.

Richard


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