[Marxism] World Soldarity needed for Bolivian people, government: reprinted from Socialist Action

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barry Weisleder is a leader of a Canadian group that supports Socialist
Action, and has a regular column on Canadian class-struggle politics in
that paper.  John Riddell of Toronto is the editor of Socialist Voice.
He edited the five volumes of The Communist International in Lenin's
Time, published by Pathfinder Press.
Fred Feldman



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SOCIALIST VOICE
Marxist Perspectives for the Workers' Movement
#80 - May 30, 2006
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WORLD SOLIDARITY NEEDED FOR
BOLIVIAN PEOPLE, GOVERNMENT

by Barry Weisleder and John Riddell

(This article is reprinted with permission from the June 2006 issue
of Socialist Action -- www.socialistaction.org/paper.htm)

TORONTO -- "General jubilation" greeted the Bolivian government's
move to take control of the country's hydrocarbon resources on May 1,
according to the Cuban daily newspaper Granma. "An impressive
multitude (that) gathered to celebrate May Day" in La Paz, Bolivia's
capital, "exploded with joy and cheers" when these measures were
announced. This joy was shared by opponents of imperialism everywhere.

The corporate media reacted with dismay and anger. "Bolivia's Folly,"
proclaimed the Globe and Mail, the most authoritative voice of
Canada's capitalist rulers. Bolivian president Evo Morales is "acting
on his shopworn socialist notion," the Globe warned. "It's the first
step down a dangerous road that will further alienate Bolivia's
business community . scare off foreign investment . and make it
harder for the country to solve its deep-rooted structural problems."

Why such alarm? Bolivia's measures were not in themselves socialist.
The government's bid to exert popular control over petroleum reserves
merely parallels the jurisdiction Canada's government has defended
since its creation in 1867. Bolivia's demand that oil companies
renegotiate extraction contracts on terms more favourable to the
country's people follows the example of Venezuela and other Third
World oil producers.

But for the imperialists, the context is alarming. The Bolivian
government's measures carry out the will of a powerful mass movement
that has in recent years repeatedly challenged the country's
capitalist rulers. Evo Morales is himself a product of this movement.
His overwhelming election victory in December 2005 represented that
movement's success in striving to establish a popular government. And
the petroleum takeover was not negotiated with the oil giants but
presented as a fait accompli to a mass rally in La Paz.

The Wall Street Journal angrily branded this an example of "another
Latin craze: the abrogation of contracts."

Other moves have followed. On May 15, the Bolivian government ordered
private pension funds to hand over $700 million in oil company shares
they had administered since the privatizations of the 1990s. The
finance minister of Spain, where many of these funds are based,
denounced this seizure "without compensation" as "unacceptable."

Bolivia's example is compelling. On May 16, Ecuador -- also
repeatedly shaken in recent years by indigenous-based mass movements
-- took over operations of U.S.-based oil giant Occidental Petroleum,
a move that will bring the Andean country $100 million a year in
extra revenue.

Washington immediately retaliated by breaking off "free trade" talks
with Quito. In Chicago on May 21, U.S. President Bush warned against
the "erosion of democracy" in Bolivia and Venezuela. He darkly
linked "prosperity and peace" to "respect for property rights."

The `ALBA' alternative

Bolivia does not stand alone. On April 29, its president signed a far-
reaching Peoples' Trade Agreement together with Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba, at a meeting of the three
presidents in Havana.

Bolivia also joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas
(ALBA), the Venezuelan government's plan to unite the peoples of
Latin America around "the egalitarian principles of justice and
equality," to which Cuba subscribed in 2004.

The terms of the three-country agreement were sweeping, providing for
massive Cuban assistance to upgrade health standards and launch a
literacy program, $130 million in direct Venezuelan financing,
Venezuelan support for Bolivia's petroleum industry, 10,000
scholarships in Venezuela and Cuba for Bolivian students, and many
other measures.

There is more. In February, the United States succeeded in imposing
on Colombia a "free trade" agreement that robbed Bolivia of the
market for 60% of its vital soybean exports. Cuba and Venezuela
responded by undertaking to purchase the entire available crop at
favorable prices.

The Wall Street Journal now angrily terms Bolivia "a virtual
Venezuelan colony flush with Cuban agents."

Washington has so far focused its retaliation on Venezuela, carrying
out threatening military exercises close to the Venezuelan coastline.
On May 16 the U.S. State Department announced the politically
significant gesture of an arms embargo against Venezuela in reprisal
for that country's relations with Cuba and Iran and its failure
to "cooperate with the United States in fighting terrorism."

Need for solidarity

Bolivia now faces the likelihood of a U.S.-sponsored campaign to
destabilize and overthrow its government, similar to the military
coup and other dirty tricks attempted against Venezuela in the last
half-decade.

Progressive forces of every hue in Bolivia now have strong reason to
rally behind their government in a united front against threats from
imperialism and the Bolivian oligarchy, while continuing to press for
radical measures to benefit the poor majority. And in the United
States and Canada, the key task is to build a strong solidarity
movement in defense of Bolivia and its two embattled allies.

During the first months of the Morales presidency, the Bolivian
government acted slowly and cautiously, measuring its moves in an
objective situation that is in many ways unfavorable. Bolivia is the
poorest country in South America. It is landlocked, far from its
allies. The army and police, which have a long tradition of acting to
defend imperialist interests, are still intact. The state apparatus
is largely hostile. And the government is only now forging unity with
the mass movements that brought it to power.

Moreover, neighboring South American countries, especially Brazil and
Argentina, play a crucial role in Bolivia's economy, trade, and
international communications. Brazil's Petrobras is the largest
investor in Bolivian petroleum and the biggest loser in its assertion
of state control over the industry. At the same time, the governments
of Brazil and Argentina are in conflict with imperialism; they helped
bring down the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.
One of the Morales government's major achievements has been to avoid
a breach with these two countries -- a process in which Venezuela's
support has been vital.

As Grenada's Maurice Bishop once observed, "The revolution is not
like making instant coffee." For further radical measures to succeed,
the Morales government must maneuver to secure the most favourable
relationship of forces inside and outside Bolivia.

National liberation

Moreover, the Bolivian upsurge is not in the first instance a
movement for socialism. It is a struggle for democracy and
sovereignty on the part of a nation brutally oppressed by
imperialism. The dominant characteristic of this struggle has been
the efforts of Bolivia's long-marginalized indigenous majority to
achieve full citizenship and to refound the nation on the basis of
respect for indigenous people's culture and economy.

Marxism has long recognized the progressive character of such anti-
imperialist and anti-colonial movements, even if -- like Cuba's July
26 Movement -- they do not inscribe socialism on their banners.

Most of Bolivia's toilers are not waged employees but are independent
producers -- farmers, cooperative miners, artisans, traders, and
peddlers. The government of Evo Morales aims to increase the
viability of these family-based economic units. Such measures may
include the provision of credits, infrastructure, social services,
and marketing assistance. Such a program responds to the historic
struggle of indigenous peoples in Bolivia to maintain and strengthen
their particular ayllu, the aboriginal socio-economic structures in
which land is not a commodity.

Workers' and farmers' government

The policy of state aid to independent producers forms part of the
Marxist program. It has been long practiced by the workers' and
farmers' government of Cuba. In Bolivia, this goal is sometimes
called "Andean capitalism," a term that can be misunderstood outside
its specific context. In fact, effective support for small-scale
family and community enterprise is only possible when workers,
farmers, and other independent producers take full control of the
government apparatus and use it to rein in the power of the giant
capitalist corporations.

Bolivia today may be taking initial steps toward constituting such a
workers' and farmers' government. Bolivian President Evo Morales said
April 5, "You can't transform things from the [presidential] palace.
I feel like a prisoner of neoliberal laws." To escape this prison,
his government is organizing an assembly to write a new
constitution. "We captured the government," Morales said. "With the
Constituent Assembly we want to capture political power." (Elections
to the assembly, which is to redraft the country's constitution, are
to be held in July.)

Morales is on the right track here. Winning the presidency gives
Bolivia's popular movements at best only a small fragment of
political power -- a toehold. Bolivian working people need full
control of the governmental apparatus and the armed forces. Only a
government of working people, reflecting the will of the indigenous
majority of the nation, can carry through the "profound democratic
and anti-colonial revolution" recommended by Bolivia's vice-president
Alvaro Garcia Linares.

Solidarity from within the imperialist countries will help win for
the Bolivian people the time and freedom of action needed to press
this process forward.

Chavez's Challenge

There is another vital aspect to the challenge of Bolivia, Venezuela,
and Cuba. The leaders of these three countries are challenging us to
join in a worldwide movement for social justice. They are awakening
new interest in the idea of socialism -- including among working
people in Canada and the United States.

Hugo Chavez made such an appeal following the May 10-12 European
Union-Latin American summit. At the Vienna summit Chavez and Morales
squared off against the presidential figureheads of imperialist
Europe, acting as a tightly coordinated team - sporting two flags,
but fighting for a common cause.

Addressing a solidarity rally of 5,000 in Vienna, Chavez quoted the
words of Rosa Luxemburg, "The choice before humanity is socialism or
barbarism." Chavez continued, "When Rosa Luxemburg made this
statement, she was speaking of a relatively distant future. But now
the situation of the world is so bad that the threat to the human
race is not in the future, but now."

Chavez recalled his youth -- the time of the May 1968 upsurge in
France, the Beatles, and the movement against the war in Vietnam. "We
looked to the future and we thought that by the year 2000, the world
would be a different place, a better place. But the years have passed
and instead of improving, things have gotten worse.

"What has happened? -- Imperialism and capitalism have stolen my
future. And now that I am in my fifties, I am convinced that people
of my generation must spend every day, every hour, every minute of
our lives fighting for a better world -- a world free from poverty,
inequality and injustice.

"That world is called socialism! I believe that only the youth have
the necessary enthusiasm, the passion, the fire, to make the
revolution. Let us unite to save the world. Together we can succeed!"

To socialists around the world, Chavez's now oft-repeated appeal is
the realization of a long-deferred dream. The bold nations of ALBA
are placing the struggle for socialism back on the agenda for the
world's peoples. Our response should be wholehearted and vigorous
solidarity.

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