Re: [Marxism] Bolivia (was something elsewithtoomanyexclamationpoints)

["Lüko Willms" <lueko.willms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 10:49:48 -0500, rrubinelli wrote:

> So, one mo' time:
> 1. Is Bolivia in a revolutionary condition, revolutionary ferment,
> revolutionary struggle?

  My knowledge is insufficient to give a clear answer, but I think that
Bolivia is shaken by a lot of struggles, which destabilized the
bourgeois-proimperialist regime, without yet the working masses taking
power and establishing a workers and farmers government.

> 2.  If so, is that struggle determined by the economic forces of
> capitalism, the contradiction between property and labor,
> between means and relations,  between needs and profit?

  In final analysis, yes, but the concrete reality shows itself in a
much more faceted and distorted way. E.G. the imperialist exploitation
and intervention to secure this exploitation plays certainly a very
important role.

> 3.  If so, can the "revolution" be described, and confined, as a
> "national revolution," a struggle for "national salvation"?

  It certainly can be described as that, on confined (wait, I have to
look up my dictionary); OK, if it can be confined to a national
revolution will depend on the struggle and its outcome.

> 4.  Whether so or not, can the tasks, the needs the impulse
> to revolution be fulfilled with a program of national class
> collaboration, or is such a program simply a manifestation or the
> struggle emerging from a past of capitalism itself incomplete
> unfulfilled?

  I do not really understand the question. Struggle between the classes
is certainly not a collaboration between those social formations. I
don't know if your question is answered when I assert that the assertion
of Bolivia's control and ownership over its national resources has been
at the center of the past years' struggles, and will have to be achieved
by any revolutionary development, should it not fall flat right at the
start.

> 5.  Is socialist expropriation of the means of production
> based on the organization of workers power, i.e. councils, factory
> committees, etc., possible and necessary (as possibility and necessity
> become the same thing in dialectic)?

  This is a far fledged and sweeping comment; the expropriation of
private owners and nationalization of natural resources and means of
production will certainly occur, but I would think it will be a process
stretched over a more or less long period of time.


  Overall comment:

  Your questions do not deal with the art of political leadership, but
pose only some doctrinary questions. Yet doctrine is not of much help
here.

  The main thing for a revolutionary leadership will be to keep the
masses together, let them gain self-confidence, and keep them mobilized.
Self-confidence and self-reliance also mean to not subjugate our actions
and goals to the interests of the propertied classes, not wait for their
nod of approval.

  It also means to avoid storming to fast ahead with abstract solutions
for tasks the masses have not yet taken up as their own.

  The first question before everything else is the question how Evo
Morales will use his post as president of the republic.

  Morales has been one of the central leaders of the mass mobilizations
of the past years. Will he use his office as the podium to lead further
mass mobilizations, or will he adapt to the tradition of the office
administering a bourgeois state submissive to the US embassy? Future
will tell. I don't have enough insight to make reliable predictions.

  Certainly the agreements he made in Havanna, and the decision to make
his first trip after the election victory to Cuba, point in the right
direction. A big literacy campaign touches the whole nation, and
especially the most downtrodden who will be the main forces of any
popular revolutionary movement. It secures advantages, enhances
self-confidence, and requires a real national mobilization.

   The same applies to medical care, about which Morales also signed
agreements in Havanna.

   If you ask for principles, I could name some:

a) there must not be a single landless peasant left, although it should
be noted that the process of nationalization of the land can be
stretched over long time;

b) the revolution will advance by imposing practical solutions to
immediate practical problems, and those problems which the masses
recognize as their own with solutions at hand, thru struggle. I guess
that hardly any practical solution can be implemented without infringing
priveleges of the propertied classes, who will raise resistance, which
has to be dealt with.

   Every single step will raise new problems, or rather move other
problems into the prime attention of the masses of working people, and
can then be tackled by practical solutions to immediate practical
problems. How fast and how far this development will advance does depend
on the struggle, and on the capacities of the leadership and the unity
of a large revolutionary avantgarde.

   To political currents outside of the party of the new president, I
would recommend to decisively support every step forward, take part in
the movement, look for issues which can create more unity.

   Also remember that the political fight for the soviets to take power
in the Russian revolution of 1917 meant the appeal to the Mensheviks and
Social Revolutionaries to take power, since these parties had the
majority in the soviets until October, at least on the national level
and its congress of soviets. It was only after the Provisional
Government in Petrograd was removed on 27 October (old style) that the
Bolsheviks gained the majority of the all-russian congress of soviets.

   I would energetically warn against a hostile attitude to the Morales
presidency right from the start, the opposite should be done. This would
not necessary imply a blanco check of blind confidence, but the
readiness to march forward together, with careful but firm steps.

   Unity makes strength.


Comradely yours,
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany
--------------------------------
visit http://www.mlwerke.de Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotzki in German

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