Events have again taken a turn towards mass insurrection in Bolivia. The Bolivian workers uprising of October 2003 that caused President Losada (Goni) to flee to the US, was halted by the union leaders who did a deal with Vice-President Carlos Mesa. But Mesa did not carry out his side of the agreement. Once more the masses are on the move blocking roads and striking against Mesa’s proposal to sell the gas to multinationals. The path ahead must be the call for the downfall of Mesa and for a National Congress of the delegates of the COB (national union) and peasant organisations, backed by the formation of workers militias and soldiers committees, to nationalise the gas without compensation and under workers’ control, and to expropriate the imperialist corporations and put in place a workers’ and poor farmers government. Here we summarise the Theses on Bolivia of the International Trotskyist Fraction (Fraccion Trotskista Internationalista – FTI).
Bolivia is a hinge of the world revolution and counter-revolution
The events in Bolivia are critical to the whole balance of class forces internationally. US imperialism has gone on the offensive in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and has contained the revolutionary upsurges in Argentina, Equador and Peru. A new worker and peasant uprising in Bolivia may tip the balance once more in favour of the masses and begin a new offensive against capital lthat is already signalled in the awakening of the US working class, the French mobiilsation against its government attacks on the pension. Thus much rests on the success of the Bolivian masses in breaking out of the containment imposed on them by the bureaucracy and the left reformists and fake Trotskyists who have come together in the World Social Forum.
The crisis of Bolivia’s semi-colonial economy shape the events today. First, the question of who will benefit from the gas resources, the imperialists or the poor people of Bolivia, makes this fight a fight to the death. Second, Bolivia’s national debt is not 80% of GDP and this dictates that the state must pay the debt by attacking the masses. The uprisings of February and October 2003 and December 2004 were all caused by increasing prices and taxes on poor workers and farmers. Third, the Bolivian bourgeoisie are weak and divided about how to solve the crisis. This thrusts the union and peasant leaders to the fore as the managers of the crisis. Each time the masses rise up the bureaucracy rescues the situation by doing a deal with Mesa. But this time the mass pressure from below forced the bureacuracy to call a 24 hour general strike on January 10. This coincided with an indefinite strike in El Alto (working class suburb above La Paz) to expel the French multinational Illimani which now owns the water supply. But the leaders of the unions and peasant organisations managed to prevent these strikes from turning into an offensive against Mesa.
March events
By early March 2005 the economic crisis was now expressed as a national political crisis. The mobilisations, strikes, pickets etc threatened to paralyse the country. The indefinite general strike of March 2 in El Alto was joined by a blockade of the refinery of Senkata on March 7 by 40,000 workers. In the rest of the country the occupation of oil fields and the cutting of roads in seven of the nine departments of the country continued. Again, the workers demanded that the leadership of the COB call a 48 hour national strike from March 15. Once again there was the possibility of a new revolutionary uprising of the masses. Mesa reacted by offering his resignation on March 6. This was an ultimatum to the ruling class to back him with new powers as a ‘referee’ to bring the different fractions from the bourgeoisie into line, to appeal to the reactionary petty bourgeoisie for support, and to try to go on offensive against the workers and farmers. Thus Mesa would impose social order and guarantee both the plunder of the gas by the US monopolies and payment of the external debt to the IMF.
The COB and peasant leaders stepped into solve the crisis again. They wanted to avoid an uprising such as October 2003. Evo Morales, the main peasant leader, and Solares of the COB signed a unity pact, proposing that the government impose a 50% royalty payment on the gas, and called for a Constituent Assembly. Against this pact with the national bourgeoisie against the workers, revolutionaries could have broken this pact with a program of transitional demands: "Neither 18% nor 50% royallties but nationalization without compensation and under workers control of the gas, petroleum, water and mines! Expropriation without compensation and nationalization of the banks under control of the workers, to reduce the debt of the small farmers and to give them cheap loans ". A call for a political general strike in the middle of the political crisis would have thrust the proletariat immediately to the head of the struggle and demonstrated to the rest of the exploited classes that only it can resolve the crisis of the oppressed and exploited nation by leading the fight against imperialism. The united intervention of the working class, led by the miners vanguard, would quickly have solved the situation in favor of the exploited, and would have sealed the fate Mesa, the puppet parliament and the mine owners state!
The result was that Mesa was re-confirmed as President by the unanimous vote of all the Deputies including the MAS (Morales) and MIP (Quispe). With this move the government bought some time. Yet it could not overcome the deepening division in the ruling class between those openly serving imperialism, and those acting for the reactionary national bourgeoisie. Mesa risked an open controntation between the army and the masses that could have seen a section of the military split in support of the insurrection. While Mesa still had the upper hand there was the potential for the masses to stage another insurrection. For that reason the oil monopolies held Mesa back. Instead they proposed new elections to win electoral legitimacy. But Parliament refused and voted to impose royalties of 18% and taxes of 32% on the monopolies. Mesa threatened to veto this law if the Senate did not reduce the royalties and taxes. Morales, who demanded 50% royalties, then claimed that the new law would provide another $600-$750 million dollars for distribution to the people and so called off the strikes and blockades.
At present there is an impasse. The ruling class is agreed on Mesa remaining in power and a pact of national unity to contain the masses. Imperialism is only interested in political stability to allow it to super-exploit the oil and gas. They do not yet have the power to defeat the masses outright in an armed showdown, and have to rely on the leaders of the peasants and workers to hold them back. They know this situation is unstable as the masses have the potential to break through this strangle hold.
Background to the current crisis
The events of March means that the truce made between the regime and the leaders of the workers and peasant organisations in October 2003 has come to an end. Already the existing regime based on a longstanding peasant/military pact had come under attack in February 2003. The October truce followed an uprising that included a split in the army forcing the resignation of President Lozada (Goni).
The truce with Mesa depended on the key role of Morales, Quispe etc who promised real gains for the masses to prevent them taking the insurrection on to the seizure of power. But this truce gave Mesa the time to rebuild his regime. He could not rely on the army because of the risk of further splits. Behind the cover of the truce he tested the masses resolve to fight with selected attacks on the most militant sectors, but met with strong opposition like the rebellion at Ayo Ayo and the student occupation at Ururo.
Mesa also tried to bolster his regime with the referendum on oil royalties and the local body elections of December of 2004. The result was the March crisis and Mesa’ re-confirmation under a new truce more favourable to the bosses. Mesa’s has been strengthened elevated as a Bonaparte balancing between imperialism and the national bourgeosie on the one side, and the masses on the other. Nevertheless, he is not strong enough to dispense with the treacherous petty bourgeois role of Morales, Solares and Quispe, still tying the masses to the bourgeois camp.
The present situation is therefore the direct result of the treacherous role of the misleaders of the workers and peasants organisations. Twice, between January and March this year they have held back workers from embarking on new revolutionary attacks on the regime. Instead they harness the pressure from below to bargain for more oil rent for the masses.
The Revolution is in Danger
The revolution that initiated the heroic workers and Bolivian farmers in February 2003 and was interrupted twice by truces is in danger. If the bourgeois fractions manages to use its unity pact with the labour and peasant misleaders (apopular front) to contain the masses, the revolution will come to a haltand counter-revolution will gain the upper hand. If the masses break this new truce, then Mesa may fall and the revolution will once more re-open. The crucial factor that will decide which way Bolivia goes is the independent organisation of the workers and peasants breaking with their treacherous leaders and freeing themselves to complete their insurrection against the hated bosses’ regime.
In colonies and semicolonies the dominant bourgeois fraction always serves imperialism. The national bourgeoisie may squabble over its share of the rent with imperialism on one side and the masses on the other, but ultimately its class interests are aligned with imperialism against the masses.
Opposing it is the working class leading the small farmers and all oppressed people. This can only mean victory or defeat for one class or the other. Either imperialism imposes its repressive regime of super-exploitation, or imperialism is overthrown and a workers’ and small farmers’ state is established.
This means that Morales and the petty bourgeois leaders of the farmers and workers must objectively act for the national bourgeoisie and ultimately imperialism. Their program is no more than to negotiate and haggle over the rent. They will not fight to overthrow the bosses regime because that would elimitate their role as negotiators of class truces. Even if Bolivia won a larger share of the rent, say 50% royalties on oil, this money would go to pay off the national debt and not go to the workers or small farmers. That is why Morales and Co voted for Mesa to stay in power while at the same time calling for a Constituent Assembly as a talkshop for the bourgeois fractions to debate who gets what share from the oil rent
Will the masses, or will the imperialists, pay for their crisis?
The exploited masses of Bolivia rose up in October 2003 against the imperialist plunder othe hydrocarbons (oil and gas) “Out Gringos, the gas is not for sale!". Today their misleaders tell them that the problem has been solved by increasing the royalties to 18% so that $750 millions are prevented from leaving the country. But increasing the share of the oil rent cannot solve the problems facing the workers and poor farmers.
At every meeting of the COB (Confederation of Workers), and at every meeting of the striking people of Al Alto (working class city above La Paz), the demands were:
· Down with the pact of nation unity between Mesa, Morales, Solares etc that allows the monopolies to rob the gas and petroleum and the national bourgeoisie to haggle over its share!
· Neither 18% nor 50% royalties! Oil and Gas for the Bolivians! Nationalization without payment and under workers control of the gas, petroleum, the water, the mines!
· Expropriation without payment of the banks under control of the workers, to reduce the debts of the small farmers and to give them cheap credit!
· Expropriation without payment of the great landowners and distribution of land to the farmers;
· Break with the IMF!
· A sliding scale of wages and working hours, as raised in the Theses of Pulacayo (the program of the COB in 1946 modelled on the Trotskyist Transitional Program) to end super-exploitation, poverty and unemployment; an emergency plan of public works and economic plan to make the bourgeoisie, the imperialists and the IMF to pay for the crisis.
For a national Congress of workers and small farmers delegates!
Workers are openly questioning the betrayals of their misleaders. Every meeting over the last few weeks of miners, teachers, regional and local COB branches, etc is demanding that Solares consult the rank and file before making agreements. There is no support for increasing royalties only nationalisations. In El Alto, the rank and file said that if Morales and Quispe betrayed again, they would apply popular justice like the mayor of Ayo Ayo (he was lynched).
After February 2003, to overthrow Goni and begin the revolution, the workers had to replace the old bureaucratic leadership of the COB. Today they have to break from their new leaders.
Against Class Collaboration! Against the leaders of the COB who want to trap workers in national pacts!
A National Congress of workers and farmers delegates, representing democratically the exploited millions of Bolivia would immediately have a million times more authority than Mesa, or the puppet parliament and that the handful of representatives of the imperialist monopolies and employer's associations that conspire against the people in back rooms.
It could immediately make a revolutionary decree calling for the nationalisation without compensation and under working control of all the natural resources, and for the immediate release of the jailed leaders of Ayo Ayo, the landless farmers and other political prisoners.
Mesa has once already called on the reactionary petty bourgeoisie to attack the workers and farmers in the streets. No doubt a National Congress would be met with a similar call for armed reaction to smash the Congress and its program. He will also call out the armed forces when he needs them to massacre the people. To defend themselves from armed attack, the Congress must immediately create workers and farmers militias and send out a call to the rank and file soldiers - the children of the workers and farmers under arms – to mutiny, to form committees of soldiers, and to send its delegates to the workers and farmers Congress.
This Congress would replace the collaborationist leadership of the COB with a General Staff of revolutionary workers and small farmers leaders, who would prepare and organise an armed showdown of the workers and farmers militias alongside the soldiers committee, to bring down the government of the mine-owners and the imperialists so that the Congress can take the power into its own hands.
For a class alliance of workers and small farmers led by the workers
The misleaders of the COB, while subordinating the workers to the capitalists, also breaks the workers’ alliance with the small farmers, beraying the farmers, also throwing thenm into the arms of the bosses. Only the workers can meet the demands and needs of the small farmers, because of the decisive role they play in production. They extract the oil, the gas, the minerals; they work them, they refine them, they transport them. Workers run the banks and telecoms. Workers can meet the interests of small farmers by taking over the refineries, banks, mines and gasfields, and distributing land, cancelling debts, and giving cheap credit, and providing access to water, machinery, technical advice etc.
But to lead the small farmers in a class alliance the workers must retain their armed independence of the capitalists. A national Congress of workers and small farmers deputies must have an independent program backed by workers militias and soldiers committees proving to the small farmers that they will fight to the end to over throw the regime. This would quickly teach the small farmers to abandon their petty bourgeois misleaders and their polices of truces with the national bourgeoisie.
Workers’ power lives in the strikes, blockades and occupations!
Solares and co have tried to smash the independent power of the workers organisations. But they have not succeeded, The flame of ‘dual power’ (workers’ power opposed to bourgeois state power) is alive in the workers city of El Alto which maintained a strike for 8 days. And when Morales and Solares called off the strikes and blockades in favour of negotiating 50% royalties, the popular meetings resolved: "Mesa, his ministers and all MPs out!"; and to continue to fightor the nationalization of the hydrocarbons for which more than 60 died and 400 were injured during during the street battles of October 2003. It is no accident that the bourgeois newspaper La Razon of Bolivia, has stated with alarm that today in El Alto "a soviet has been formed"!
In the same way, the flame of the dual power is alive in those militant organisations that made armed pickets and blocades of 72 highways, bringing transport and commerce to a halt and creating an embryonic dual power. These organisations already have the authority to convene a National Congress of workers and farmers delegates, to create workers militias and soldiers committees, capable of organising a decisive showdown with the government to dissolve the puppet parliament and take power in its hands by constituting a workers and farmers government!
The Bolivian masses are the best allies of the Iraqi resistance and militant US workers
The politics of class collaboration of the reformist misleaders is not ‘national’. It is the politics of the reformists of the World Social Forum of Lula, Chávez, the restorationist Castro bureaucracy, the union bureaucracies of every colour. At this year’s WSF at Porto Alegre, these people conspired to defeat the Bolivian revolution in the same way they did with the Argentine revolution. The treacherous Morales, Quispe and Solares want to make the workers and farmers of Bolivia believe that by electing them to parliament they can make solve all o their problems by making the national bourgeoisie extract higher royalties and taxes from the oil monopolies.
They point to Chavez to make their case. The same Chavez who sells oil to the US to use in killing Iraqis, and who agrees to a joint fight with Uribe of Colombia against ‘terrorism’. Solares hold up Castro as the model for socialism in Venezuela. The same Castro who backs Kirchner in Argentina and restores capitalism in Cuba. They praise Lula who attacks the landless farmers occupations, and allowed the recent massacre of 60 by landowners; or Kirchner who imprisons scores of political opponents; or Tabaré Vázquez, who rules Uruguay in the interests of imperialism.
It is not the national bourgeoisie who are the allies of the Bolivian workers and farmers! They are their enemies! Their allies are the heroic Iraqi resistance!+ They are the Brazilian workers who have formed CONLUTAS to fight Lula and the union bureaucrats of the CUT; they are the workers of the Subte, telephone, schools etc of Argentina, who struggle against the government of Kirchner and the rotten union bureaucracy of the CGT and the CTA.
But the main ally of the Bolivian masses is the North American proletariat, in particular the oppressed black and Latino workers who are treated as pariahs by the bosses and the union bureaucrats of the Afl-cio. They are the black workers of Local 10 of the ILWU (harbour workers) of Oakland, who stopped work on March 19, to mark two years of the US occupation of Iraq, and who sparked the militant workers who formed the Million Worker March Movement. These are the true allies of the workers and small farmers of Bolivia and Latin America!
The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class must be overcome
The re-opening of the Bolivian revolution reveals once more the absence of a revolutionary party. Without that party the revolution will not be finished and suffer again counter-revolutionary defeats.
Once more the events of the 2005 expose the treacherous politics of Stalinism and Castroism. For the second time in less than two years, Castroism has stopped the workers revolution from taking power. This new betrayal is of the same order of those of Chile in 1973 and of Nicaragua in the 1980s. But the Castoites need the fake Trotskyistst to cover their left flank. This is the role of the POR Lora (Revolutionary Workers Party of Guilliemo Lora). POR talks of “insurrection” but without building workers’ militias or arming the masses. Like the Castroites its program is subordinated to a popular “anti-imperialist” front with the national bourgeoisie like 1971. This will defeat the 23rd Bolivian revolution as it defeated the 2nd in 1971.
Others, like the LOR-CI - the satellite group of the PTS of Argentina exhibits a enthusiams for parliamentary and trade union cretinism, calling on the COB to liquidate itself into a reformist workers’ party! The COB which keeps alive the embryo organs of dual power will become another parliamentary talking shop. The 3rd Bolivian revolution reveals the total bankruptcy of those who have broken with Trotskyism.
We are in a race against time to build a revolutionary party to lead the revolution before the forces of the counter-revolution prevail. Only the workers’ vanguard breaking with the bureaucracy can rescue the revolution by fighting for a national congress of the COB and farmers organisations, and to transform these into soviets, workers’ and farmers’ militias and soldiers committees capable of taking power.
In those organs, a small nucleus of revolutionaries can openly fight to win the masses, convincing them of the justice and correctness of our revolutionary program. For this it is necessary that that nucleus of revolutionaries is part of the struggle to regroup internationally all the healthy forces of the Trotskyism against the all the treacherous liquidaors of the 4th International.
The student-worker group Internationalist Red October (a member of the FTI-CI, born in the heat of the rebellion of the students of the UTO of Oruro, has made this fight as its own. In support of IRO we must mobilise all the forces of healthy Trotskyism for the socialist revolution. A start is the Call for an International Conference of Principled Trotskyists and Revolutonary International Workers Organisations made be the Liaison Committee (see Class Struggle 59, January-February 2005).
The full text in Spanish is on our website http://www.geocities.com/communistworker/boliviatheses.html Any errors in translation and condensing are the editors.
From Class Struggle 60 March-April 2005
The recent uprising in Bolivia in the last months has taken the world’s centre stage. The workers and peasants rose up in their tens of thousands and forced the hated President ‘Goni’ to flee to Miami. But the revolution was stopped halfway by the leaders of the peasants’ and workers organizations’ who made deals with Goni’s replacement, another US stooge, Mesa. The leaflet below was a joint statement published during the recent uprising in Bolivia before the resignation of Goni in October? It raises the central question of the necessity for a nationwide workers’ congress to prepare for a Workers’ and Peasant’s Government. These demands were reprinted in the paper of our fraternal group Poder Obrero of Bolivia at the height of the struggle in September.
Long live the heroic revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle of the Bolivian workers and peasants!
Long live the general strike with road blockages across all the nation!
For a workers’ and peasants’ government of the United National Leadership, the COB and of all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations that take part in it, based on the workers’ and peasants’ militia and on the self-organization of the workers and the people!
Out with imperialism and its blood sucking monopolies from Bolivia and the whole Latin America!
On Saturday 20th of September, the land of Bolivia was once again stained with workers’ and peasants’ blood. The army and police assassins, sent by the US lackey Sánchez de Lozada, irrupted with blood and fire in the localities of Warisata and Sorata, where workers and peasants were maintaining a total blockade of roads against the selling of the natural gas resources to the US, for the right to produce coca and for land for the peasants. Six more workers and peasants martyrs fell murdered, among them, a woman and her eight year old daughter; dozens were wounded, imprisoned or missing.
This new massacre of Sánchez de Lozada’s -"Goni" - government and the military-backeed regime, under a new agreement with Yankee imperialism, the gas and oil barons and the officer caste of the army, was perpetrated the day after tens of thousands of workers and peasants went into the streets of La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro and the main cities of the country, extending the peasants’ road blocks against the extraordinary plundering of Bolivian gas proposed by imperialism, the oil monopolies and the government. Once more the Bolivian workers and people rose up shouting the slogans "the gas is ours and not of the foreigners"; "With the gas and the coca, the future of our sons". “Out with the gringos!"
But the massacre of Warisata did not demoralise the heroic Bolivian workers and peasants. On the contrary, while taking care of their martyrs, they prepared for battle again. In Warisata, they organized a workers’ and peasants’ militia to defend their lives from the assassin army. In Sorata, the people rose up, set fire to the prefecture, the hotels, the police stations, and the city is in the hands of the insurgent workers and peasants, who have declared themselves in a "state of civil war". Thousands of workers and peasants in the province of Omasuyos - where Warisata and Sorata are - met on September 22 in a general assembly, raising the demands "Death to Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada", "Civil war, civil war", and "the gas is not for sale", and demanding the head of the ministers of Government and of Defense and that of Goni himself.
The indefinite road blocks are now all over the country, leaving La Paz surrounded and forcing the closure of the markets in the capital city. The CSUTCB (Peasants’ Central trade-union) declared a national mourning for 30 days with road blockages and peasants’ strike, along with a peasants’ ‘state of siege’ -which means that the soldiers and the police officers cannot safely patrol the peasants’ communities. At the same time, it has called on the workers and peasants "to occupy the sub-prefectures, municipal offices, and military posts, so that the Wipala (the flag of the indigenous people) is the only national flag raised".
Today, the workers and the peasants of Bolivia have forced their leaderships - the COB, Quispe, Morales - to set up a United National Leadership of Mobilisations, and to call for a general road blockage and for the indefinite general strike from September 29th, in the defense of the gas, for their particular demands which includes the resignation of the murderous government of Goni and his military regime.
So, the workers and the peasants have risen up again, breaking the truce made last February with the government by the leadership of the COB, Quispe and Evo Morales - members of the World Social Forum -, a truce that aborted the revolutionary uprising when the workers and peasants were mobilising against Goni’s government and his military forces, faced the army in the streets, threatening to divide it and causing divisions among the officers, and beginning the Fourth Bolivian revolution, under the battle cry "Rifles, shrapnel, Bolivia will not be silenced".
Down with Sánchez de Lozada! Throw the imperialist pirates out of Bolivia!
Long live the heroic struggle and the general strike of our Bolivian brothers and sisters, who show the way for all the Latin American workers and exploited people, breaking the truces and the pacts imposed by the reformist leaderships grouped in the World Social Forum, and confronting the imperialist plunderers and their lackey governments and regimes!
Long live "the war for the gas" of Bolivian workers and peasants!
Fight Yankee imperialism, the imperialist oil monopolies, and the servile government that wants to steal the gas resources!
After having plundered the mineral riches of Bolivia for decades, after having taken the oil, after having left the country exhausted and in ruins, and the workers and peasants in misery, this gang of robbers who are the imperialist oil monopolies, Sánchez de Lozada and the Bolivian bourgeoisie, are ready to perpetrate a new extraordinary robbery against the people. The prize is very valuable: Bolivia has enormous gas reserves, valued at US$80 billion (when the GDP of this country is only US$8 billion), while the vast majority of the population has to use firewood to cook, and suffers cold without heating. The government has decreed the selling of the natural gas to an imperialist consortium (Pacific LNG, a consortium of YPF Repsol, British Gas and British Petroleum), which will build a gas pipeline to the Chilean port of Patillos and from there ship the gas to the United States. This business would make US$1.3 billion dollars of profit per year for 20 years (i.e., US$26 billion dollars!) for this monopoly and Bolivia will get only US$70 million dollars per year in royalties (i.e., US$1.4 billion in 20 years!
The same Yankee butchers and their greedy corporations that invaded and occupied Iraq to get its oil, today want to steal the Bolivian workers’ and peasants’ gas! How true was the cry of our Bolivian class brothers and sisters when, during the mobilizations against the war of Iraq, they shouted: "To Iraq for its oil, to Kollasuyu (indigenous name for Bolivia) for its gas; Gringos out of Iraq!”
Today, before such blatant robbery, the exemplary struggle of the workers and the peasants of Bolivia shows once more that they are not willing to be plundered. They had already shown this in 2000 in Cochabamba when they rose up against the imperialist monopolies that wanted to steal their water, and against the government of Banzer; and by opposing with a civil war the imperialist policy of eradication of the coca; and then last February again rising up against Goni’s generalised attack on wages ordered by the IMF, almost overthrowing the regime and forcing it to retreat. It proves once more that the working class - with its allies the poor peasants - is the only class that does not have any interest in serving imperialism, and for that reason, it is the only class capable of carrying the struggle against imperialism to the end, liberating the oppressed nation from its yoke.
Down with Sánchez de Lozada and the military-backed regime!
Throw imperialism and its plundering monopolies out of Bolivia!
For a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of the United National Leadership, the COB and all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations that are part of it, based on workers’ and peasants’ militia and on the independent organizations of the workers and the poor people!
This gang of thieves and assassins, massacrers of the people and plunderers of the nation which is imperialism, its insatiable monopolies, the lackey bourgeoisie and the government of Goni, wants to steal the wealth of the people by means of blood and fire, to continue to condemn the people to hunger and misery and reduce Bolivia to a slave colony.
The only way to prevent this happening, to stop the plundering of gas and the natural resources of the country, and to win bread, work, land, living wages, and the right to cultivate coca, is to open up a victorious revolution with the general strike and road blockages, taking control of the factories, the banks, the transport, extending and centralizing the workers’ and peasants’ armed militias, destroying the West Point caste of army officers, overthrowing the murderous lackey government of Goni, smashing every pillar of the regime and expelling imperialism and its monopolies. And then imposing, on these ruins, a government of the United National Leadership, the COB and all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations comprising it, based on workers’ and peasants’ militia and on the independent organizations of the workers and the poor people.
To carry this decisive combat forward, the United National Leadership, the COB and all the workers’ and peasants’ organizations that take part in it must fight for the dissolution and disarmament of the police and the army and the construction and centralization of workers’ and peasants’ armed militia. This is the only way to destroy the army – a key pillar of the military-backed regime and of the state –at the same time calling upon the rank and file soldiers and the subordinate officers of the army –sons of workers and peasants –to rebel against the West Point caste of sepoy officers, to disarm and destroy it, and to organize themselves in committees of armed soldiers, to coordinate with the workers’ and peasants’ organizations and to join the general strike, putting their weapons in the service of the workers’ and peasants’ militia.
By overthrowing Goni and the military-backed regime and imposing a workers’ and peasants’ government, that breaks with imperialism and expropriates the expropriators; by re-nationalizing without payment and under workers’ control the gas, the oil, the mines, and all the privatized enterprises; by expropriating imperialism in general and breaking with the IMF, the World Bank and the IDB (International Development Bank); by imposing the free production and marketing of the coca, the provision of agricultural machinery, the canceling of the debts and the granting of cheap credit to the ruined small producers of the country, through expropriating and nationalising the banks under workers’ control and the creation of a single official bank; by nationalizing foreign trade; and by taking every measure to guarantee work, decent wages, health and education for the people; only in this way will the Bolivian working class and the peasants be able to finish with the catastrophe, the plundering and the colonial oppression caused by imperialism, the national bourgeoisie and the lackey government.
No new truce or pact with Goni and the gang of plunderers of the people!
For a Workers’ and Peasants’ National Congress of rank and file mandated delegates, democratically elected, to organize the decisive combat and to prepare the insurrection to defeat Goni and the military regime!
After the massacre in Warisata, and facing the indefinite general strike, the government of Sánchez de Lozada once more is trying to negotiate sector by sector, trying "to dialogue" with those organizations that have particular demands, such as the peasants led by Quispe, and ignoring others such as the COB who demand his resignation. For his part, Evo Morales declared that the coca producers of Chapare would not join the road blockages before October 10th because "the executive secretary of the COB was premature in calling for a national mobilization", and he criticised Quispe for demanding that the representatives of the government go to Warisata to negotiate, saying that Quispe and the government "are gambling with the situation of the country".
No new truce or pact with the murderous government of Goni and the gang of plunderers of the people!
It is necessary to stop the unity created in the struggle of the workers and the peasants from being broken by the reformist leaderships, and from allowing the energy, the struggle and the blood of the workers and the peasants to be abused by these leaders to establish new truces and pacts with the bosses, and, in this way, to save the government and its military backers. The only way forward for the masses is to create the widest direct democracy, with a workers’ and peasants’ national Congress of rank and file delegates who are democratically elected, mandated and recallable, in the COB and all the workers’ and peasants organizations that are part of the United National Leadership.
At the same time, in every village, every city, in every region, it is necessary to set up strike committees with elected delegates of all the organizations in struggle which become a true workers’ and peasants’ power. This National Congress, a true workers’ and peasants’ parliament - opposed to the power of the exploiters - would become an organization respected by all the masses in struggle, and with an enormous authority to guarantee the construction of workers’ and peasants’ militias, to advance workers’ and peasants’ control over production and distribution, to carry out the expropriation and the nationalisation of the banks under workers’ control, and the formation of a single official bank which releases small ruined producers from debt and provides cheap credit, as well as the nationalization of the foreign trade, and to fulfill these tasks by organising a triumphant insurrection to overthrow Goni and the military-backed regime and then to put in place a workers’ and peasants’ government that the bureaucratic leaderships of the trade unions, Stalinism and social democracy cannot do themselves.
The Bolivian workers and peasants show the way forward for the exploited of the whole Continent to break the collaborators truces and agreements and to confront imperialism and its client regimes!
The fight of the workers and peasants of Bolivia today is the undisputed advance guard of the struggle of the Latin American working class and exploited people to break the truces and pacts that the reformist leaders have imposed on them, tying their hands in the face of imperialism, the employers and the exploiting and repressive client regimes.
This is the road confronting the Bolivian masses today, the one that Fidel Castro imposes, along with the union bureaucracies of the continent, the leaders of the organizations the peasant’ unions, and all the reformist leaders of the World Social Forum. One of deals and class collaboration with pro-imperialistic popular fronts like that of Lula in Brazil, of colonel Gutiérrez in Ecuador, and President Lagos in Chile; or with the supposed "anti-neoliberal" governments like the one of Kirchner in Argentina, all servile lackeys of Bush and the IMF; or with the bourgeois nationalist governments, like the one of Chávez in Venezuela, which use the masses’ fight to blackmail concessions from imperialism, only to turn on the workers as soon as they threaten to erupt into revolution.
The road opened up by the Bolivian workers and peasants, is that of a fight to the end to bring down the government of Goni (Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada) and the military-backed regime – unlike that of FARC in Colombia, which refuses to expropriate a single factory or patch of earth in the territories it controls, and is today preparing to sign a new pact with the murderous government of Uribe and with the blessing of Lula, with the blood of thousand of farmers and city workers killed by the "death squads".
For that reason, this fight of the workers and peasants must open the way to the ‘fourth’ Bolivian revolution, defeating the reformist leaders, overthrowing the government and destroying every pillar of the military-backed regime, including the officer corps, trained in assassination at West Point, and put in place a workers’ and farmers’ government based on the independent, armed organisations of the masses. This fight is inseparable from the struggle of the Ecuadorian workers and peasants to break the truce and the policy of class collaboration of their leaders and regain the revolution that they began in 1997. It is inseparable from the fight of the Argentine revolution, today retreating under the treachery of the union and piquetero bureaucracy and the reformist leaders, to raise once more its head; from that of the Peruvian workers to throw out the truces and agreements which the CGTP and the stalinists have made with Toledo; with that of Brazilian workers and farmers to break the links of the (PT) Workers Party with the popular front government of Lula and Alencar –which imposes the plans of the IMF, beating workers and massacreing farmers –and with the leaders of the CUT (Central Workers Union) and the MST (landless peasants’ movement), and to begin a political fight of masses against the government of Lula, the lackey of Bush.
Therefore, the insurgency in Bolivia today shows that the exploited people of Latin America face a life and death choice: either the victorious workers’ and peasants’ socialist revolution; or new and terrible defeats as the nations of the continent are turned into colonies and protectorates facing unlimited plunder and destruction. For that reason, the workers and peasants uprising in Bolivia depends on the successful struggles of workers for socialist revolution in each country of the continent, overthrowing the bourgeoisie, destroying its armed forces, and imposing workers and peasants governments based on the independent, armed organisations of the workers and the peasants that put an end to the imperialistic yoke and capitalist exploitation, and go on to form a Federation of Workers’ and Peasants’ Republics of Latin America.
But this historical task will only be advanced if the Latin American proletariat unites with its important ally, the North American working class, and in particular with its most exploited and oppressed fractions, the millions of black and latino workers, exploited and treated like outcasts by the imperialistic bourgeoisie, discriminated against by the US labour aristocracy and the union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, who therefore suffer the worst working conditions, unemployment, poverty, as well as persecution and harassment by the police. By uniting with the North American workers of Latino origin, the working class of Central America and South America can build unity with the North American working class to weaken imperialism, to advance the revolution in the United States and assure the victory of the continental and world-wide proletariat in the struggle for socialism. But this will only be possible if the working class and the exploited of all the Americas, the United States but also of Latin America, overcome the dominance of the North American labour aristocracy and defeat the AFL-CIO union bureaucracy, the labour lieutenants of Bush and the Yankee imperialist bourgeoisie.
All out support and solidarity with the heroic fight of our class brothers and sisters of Bolivia!
The Bolivian workers and farmers are the leading edge of the fight against imperialism and its client governments in Latin America. They show how all the workers and exploited people of the continent can break the truces and agreements that the reformist leaders have made that tie the hands of the workers before imperialism, the capitalists and their lackey regimes and repressive austerity governments, allowing these regimes to remain and go on the offensive like today in Bolivia. We cannot allow the masses to continue being massacred by the servant Goni and his killer army! Their fight is our fight! Today we must all be Bolivian!
We call on all the workers, student organizations and parties that claim to be for the workers and against imperialism, to immediately act to win support for and solidarity with our class brothers and sisters of Bolivia, with mobilizations in the streets, picketing of Bolivian embassies, and the widest unity in action.
End the massacre and repression!
Long live the struggle of the Bolivian workers and peasants!
Down with the government of Sanchez de Lozada, assassin and exploiter of the Bolivian people!
Fight imperialism in Latin America!
The international Trotskyists that signed this declaration and who fight for the revolutionary program raised here are committed to initiate actions and to participate in united actions in all every way possible to build support for and solidarity with the heroic fight of our Bolivian brothers and sisters.
At the same time, we call on the workers and peasants of the continent, to demand that the leadership of all the political organizations in Latin America who speak in name of the working class and the poor peasants, and of the unions (like the CTA and the organizations of unemployed people of Argentina; the CUT and the MST of Brazil; the CUT of Chile; the CGTP of Peru; the CONAIE and the unions of Ecuador; the PIT-CNT of Uruguay, etc) that they immediately break all agreements with the client governments, and that they break all ties that subordinate these organizations to the employer's associations. We call on the labour movement to immediately create a continental workers’ and peasants’ movement in support and solidarity with the heroic revolutionary and anti-imperialist fight of the Bolivian workers and peasants, against the imperialism that destroys the people of Latin America and against the governments that are their servants.
We must build a Trotskyist and internationalist revolutionary party, to equip the heroic Bolivian proletariat with the leadership it needs and deserves, and this is the task of the healthy forces of Trotskyist internationalists!
The Bolivian workers and peasants have given us great examples of heroism, of readiness to fight, and of revolutionary will. If they have yet not managed to open the way to the Fourth Bolivian Revolution, it is because of the leaders that they have in front of them, try at each step to prevent it. This life and death situation makes it more urgent and necessary than ever to provide the Bolivian proletariat with a new leadership –a revolutionary, Trotskyist and internationalist party, able to prevent them from sacrificing their forces and having their struggle expropriated once more by the truces, pacts, and class collaborationist alliances with "progressive patrons" and "the patriotic military".
The program of Trotskyism, of Permanent Revolution - defended in the 1940s by the POR (Revolutionary Workers Party) the Bolivian section of the IV International, became flesh and blood when the Theses of Pulacayo were adopted by the Bolivian working class in 1946 as its revolutionary action program - is now more correct than ever and has passed the test of the class struggle. Unfortunately, Pabloism and the revisionism of the IV International became a political influence on the POR and its leadership, preventing it from playing a revolutionary role in the revolution of 1952 and in the revolutionary events of the Bolivian masses in the second half of 20th century.
Therefore, though Trotskyism has passed the test, the currents that call themselves Trotskyist have not. In the three previous incomplete revolutions – in 1952, in 1971 and 1985 – these currents demonstrated all their impotence, renouncing the Theses of Pulacayo, that is to say, the fight for the armament of the masses and the strategy of building Soviets (or independent armed workers and peasants organisations), and instead subordinated themselves to the bureaucracy of the COB, if not directly to bourgeois nationalistic currents like the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) or to allies in "the patriotic military". These are the Pabloite currents that have deprived the Bolivian working class of the revolutionary leadership that it deserved: a revolutionary internationalist Trotskyist party.
Today, at the threshold of a new revolution, the forces that will bring that party into existence are being formed: they are the advanced workers who denounce the leaders who betrayed the Theses of Pulacayo, and who have taken on the task of rebuilding the COB, so that it becomes a proletarian organisation that can lead the peasants and all the exploited people towards a victorious insurrection overthrowing the government and its military backers. They are those workers, the exploited peasants and the heroic women workers who are the driving force of the workers and peasants militias, the assemblies, the strike committees, and the blockades. These, along with the honest Trotskyist militants who oppose the capitulations and betrayals of the General Staffs of the renegade currents of Trotskyism, and who seek a revolutionary way out, are the emerging forces that will create the revolutionary party.
But this party will only be able to make and complete the Bolivian revolution if it joins in the struggle to regroup the forces of a healthy internationalist and principled Trotskyism, if it learns the lessons forged by the acute events of revolution and counterrevolution world-wide, if it adopts the Theses of Pulacayo as a revolutionary internationalist program that sees Bolivia as a link in the Latin American and world-wide revolution, and if it fights against the reformist leaders in Bolivia - the union bureaucracy of the COB, Quispe,, Morales –as an indissoluble part of the wider fight against that new counter-revolutionary international the World Social Forum, and against the renegade Trotskyists that support the WSF.
Only in this way, mounting an internationalist struggle on the ruins of the revisionist and liquidationist currents that usurp the flags of Trotskyism in Bolivia, can the revolutionary internationalist Trotskyist party that the Bolivian working class needs and deserves be built as a section of the world-wide party of the socialist revolution. It is the task of the revolutionary internationalists, on the threshold of the Fourth Bolivian Revolution, to urgently collaborate to regroup our forces by campaigning for an International Conference of principled Trotskyists and internationalist revolutionary workers organizations.
October 12 of 2003. –
Lucha Marxista (Peru)
Groupe Bolchevik (France)
Communist Workers’ Group (New Zealand)
Grupo Obrero Internacionalista-CI (Chile)
Liga Obrera Internacialista-CI (Argentina)
From Class Struggle 53 November 93-January 04
