[Marxism] Random observations on the Morales thread

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

1. Fred and Walter take exception to the impatience of critics like rr and
David Walters who supposedly are jumping all over Morales before he has
taken office. In reality, there have been criticisms of Morales for some
time now, including from me. If you go back to February 2004, you'll find
the same exact arguments back and forth:
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w05/date.htm#00057 So
the current debate is just a continuation of one that is at least 2 years old.

2. There is a tendency to label criticisms of Morales as "Trotskyist". In
fact, criticism comes from a variety of quarters, including Forrest Hylton
on Counterpunch. To my knowledge, Hylton has absolutely no connections to
the Trotskyist movement. His criticisms seem to flow from a "radical
democracy" perspective geared to the social movements not unlike Patrick
Bond's.

3. There are also criticisms from Felipe Quispe, who is an indigenous
leader with Marxist politics. The differences between Quispe and Morales
run fairly deep, from what I can ascertain and may have something to do
with the fact that they are rooted in two different indigenous communities,
Aymara and Quechua respectively.

4.  There's been very little discussion of Ecuador here but it would be
useful to study what has happened there in the past few years as a prior
example of the impasse that working class and indigenous movements can
reach without a revolutionary party. The left backed Lucio Gutierrez, whose
victory was hailed in 2002 by the ultra-Trotskyists in IDOM as an opening
stage of a socialist revolution. But within a year, the leader of the
indigenous Pachakutik movement was saying: "He's a traitor. He'll always
work with this group of rightists, and the fact of the matter is, he has
become a president of the business class."

5. We don't really have an example of a parliamentary path to socialism,
even though Engels considered the theoretical possibility of such a thing
happening. But that was in a country like German where the working class
had powerful social and economic institutions that in combination with
electoral victories would pave the way for taking power. But what does that
have to do with a country like Bolivia which has had more military coups
than any country I can think of in the hemisphere? In a way, arguing about
whether Morales will nationalize gas or parrots for that matter is besides
the point. Imperialism is not likely to tolerate even a mildly meliorative
regime. So given those circumstances, it is imperative for the movement to
think about ways of defending itself from the inevitable attack. It is
important to take note of the Iraqi resistance which inhibits the ability
of the USA to intervene elsewhere. I have no idea what is in the mind of a
guerrilla setting off IED's on the road to the Baghdad airport but
objectively they are create a 2006 version of Che's "Create 2, 3 many
Vietnams."


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