Federico Fuentes
Even before the January 22 inauguration of Evo Morales as Bolivia's first indigenous president, commentators from all sides of the political spectrum, particularly on the left internationally, have begun to speculate about what course Bolivian politics will take under a Morales government.
One of the most prolific contributors to the debate has been US Marxist sociologist James Petras. Given his long history of well-respected research and also of working with some of the most important social movements in South America, Petras's critical viewpoint has been taken seriously and welcomed by many.
However, his contributions to the left's discussion of the significance of Morales's electoral victory seems to be aimed at carving himself out a niche based on denunciations of Morales as a "sell-out". In his article "New Winds from the Left or Hot Air from the Right", posted on the Canadian Dimension website on March 1, Petras wrote: "There are powerful left-wing forces in Latin America and later or sooner they will contest and challenge the power of the neoliberal converts, sooner in the case of Bolivia, where the scale and scope of Morales's broken promises and embrace of the business elite has already provoked the mobilization of the class-conscious trade unions, the mass urban organizations and the landless peasants."
For Petras, it is the case not just in Bolivia, but in all of South America, that the rebellion against neoliberalism can be explained through the dogmatic schema of (nearly always) "reformist" leaders who betray and (nearly always) "revolutionary" masses who are betrayed.
The fact that Morales would go down the path of betrayal was a foregone conclusion for Petras, who writes that his predictions have been proven right because the principal "economic and defense ministers and high ranking officials" in Morales's government "have been linked to the IMF, World Bank and previous neoliberal regimes". Morales has "totally and categorically rejected the expropriation of gas and petroleum, providing explicit long-term, large-scale guarantees that all the facilities of the major energy multinational corporations will be recognized, respected and protected by the state".
While Petras seems almost glad to write that Morales has filled his cabinets with "neoliberals", neither US imperialism nor the right-wing in Bolivia have taken comfort from the new cabinet, expressing particular "alarm" over Morales's choice for minister of hydrocarbons, Andres Soliz Rada, a long-time advocate of nationalisation of Bolivia's gas.
It is true that the Morales government will not be nationalising the foreign companies that currently run Bolivia's gas industry and booting them out of the country. But Morales didn't promise to do either of these things, so it seems odd to speak of "breaking promises". Rather, Morales has promised, not unlike Venezuela, to nationalise the country's gas reserves, which his government has declared it will carry out by July 12.
Soliz Rada has already begun to move in this direction, rebuilding the state-owned gas company and forcing the foreign-owned gas companies onto new contracts under terms favourable to the Bolivian state.
An indication of the shift in government policy on gas was the arrest on March 15 of the two main executives of the Bolivian subsidiary of the Spanish-owned Repsol, one of the biggest investors in Bolivia, on charges of selling contraband petrol and involvement in the company's avoidance of payment of US$9.2 million in taxes.
Reporting the arrests, Associated Press observed: "The case is widely seen as an attempt by President Evo Morales's new leftist government to exert tighter legal control on multinationals and exact from them more proceeds from the exploitation of Bolivia's natural resources."
The government has also announced plans to take control back over 10 semi-privatised companies, initiated a land reform program, launched a literacy campaign, increased the minimum wage by 100% and insisted it will legalise coca (whose production large numbers of indigenous farmers depend on) against US opposition, among other measures.
For Petras though, it seems that if Morales does not immediately embark on a more radical course, he must be a neoliberal sell-out. However, such a black-and-white — or rather, red-and-white — dichotomy fails to recognise the reality in Bolivia today, placing itself in opposition to the actual course of the popular movement. As Fred Feldman pointed out in his February 25 article in the Canadian Socialist Voice, "what has come under fire from much of the left is not just or even primarily Morales, but rather this course of the masses. Of course he is not 'betraying', because he is authentically representing the popular worker-peasant-indigenous movement that used him to take the presidency of the bourgeois state for itself."
Morales's party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), is not a revolutionary party, nor is Morales a Marxist. But then neither are the overwhelming majority of Bolivian working people, including those involved in the social movements based in El Alto that Petras counterposes to the MAS. It would be more accurate to speak of Morales and the powerful movement behind him as pushing for a "national revolution" against imperialism. That is, the platform of the MAS, backed by the majority of the population, cannot be implemented except by taking power from the pro-imperialist elite that currently holds it — and in the final analysis, this requires a revolution.
Guillermo Almeyra explained in his January 10 article in Mexico's La Jornada daily, "The success of Morales cannot be explained by the lack of clarity in his program; and least of all can it be explained by the slogan of 'Andean Capitalism' which his vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, pulled out of a hat purely for the sake of the elections and which will fade from sight before this year is over. It is explained rather by the hatred and hope of the oppressed, by their experiences and capacities, by the nationalist, social and ethnic demands, all of which constitute a program and a mandate."
Central to the struggle to realise these demands has been the call for a constituent assembly that would rewrite the country's constitution, but for the first time with the participation of the indigenous majority. This measure — one of the major demands of the popular movement that the government is attempting to implement against right-wing opposition — is completely ignored by Petras.
For most Bolivians — including the 88% who enthusiastically voted for Morales in El Alto, despite the hesitations of the city's social-movement leaders — Morales's electoral victory represents only the beginning of a struggle to "refound" Bolivia. As Morales has pointed out, before they can nationalise the hydrocarbons, they need to "nationalise" the legislative and executive power — in other words, take it out of the hands of forces controlled by US and multinational corporate interests and put it into the hands of those who genuinely represent the interests of Bolivians.
Historical experience has shown that the working people cannot just take control of the existing capitalist state machinery (army, police, judiciary, governmental administration) and use it to create a new social order serving their needs rather than those of the capitalist minority. Ultimately, a new form of state resting on, and constructed by, the organised workers and peasants is necessary to build socialism. But as the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela has shown, working people don't necessarily begin their struggle to change society by overthrowing the capitalist state machinery, but through a struggle to solve their problems, they come increasingly into conflict with it.
Morales will face the same class choices that Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez has confronted — either to back down in the face of opposition from powerful interests, or else rely on the self-organisation of the working people to force through increasingly radical measures against those powerful interests. The indications so far are that Morales is pushing for the implementation of key parts of the program he was elected on. How far he is able, and willing, to go will depend on the battle that unfolds.
What is especially frustrating is that Petras for a long time took a very similar stance towards the Chavez government that he currently takes towards Morales. He doesn't appear to have drawn the lessons from the Venezuelan experience.
[Federico Fuentes was Green Left Weekly's correspondent in Bolivia in the lead-up to the December presidential election.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 29, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.