Barry Weisleder & John Riddell, 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 Toronto 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. 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 US$700 million in oil company shares they had administered since the privatisations of the 1990s. The finance minister of Spain, where many of these funds are based, denounced this seizure "without compensation" as "unacceptable".
@subh2 = The ALBA alternative
Bolivia does not stand alone. On April 29, Morales 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", 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.
In February, the US succeeded in imposing on Colombia a "free trade" agreement that robbed Bolivia of the market for 60% of its vital soy bean exports. Cuba and Venezuela responded by undertaking to purchase the entire available crop at favourable 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 US 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 US-sponsored campaign to destabilise 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. Internationally, the key task is to build a strong solidarity movement in defence 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 unfavourable. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. It is landlocked, and 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, neighbouring 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 US-sponsored Free Trade Area 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 manoeuvre 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-marginalised 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 recognised 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 Morales government 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. Morales said on 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 organising an assembly, which will likely be elected in July, to write a new constitution. "We captured the government. With the constituent assembly we want to capture political power."
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.
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 5000 in Vienna, Chavez quoted the words of Rosa Luxemburg, "The choice before humanity is socialism or barbarism". He said: "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 realisation 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.
[Abridged from <http://www.socialistvoice.com>. This article was also published in Socialist Action — <http://www.socialistaction.org/paper.htm>.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 7, 2006.
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