Tom Lewis is a professor of Spanish at the University of Iowa and a member of the ISR’s editorial board. He is the author of numerous articles on Latin America. He recently returned from Bolivia.

These events reflect the hope, anger, and determination with which urban and rural workers in Bolivia are fighting against neoliberalism. Simultaneously, these events reflect important political problems that afflict the social movements, including the labor movement. There exist indeed three great revolutionary challenges that the Bolivian social rebellion must confront and overcome in order to end neoliberalism–that is, to end capitalism–in the coming period.

First, it is necessary for the rank and file of the unions and social movements which have not supported the COB’s general strike to break with the established political parties. Breaking with the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionaria and the other neoliberal parties (Unión Cívica Radical, Alianza Democrática Nacional, Nueva Fuerza Republicana, and the Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria) ought to be easy, but there are still labor leaders who insist that it is both necessary and possible to dialogue with the government. In sectors such as the street vendors and truck drivers, the union bureaucrats openly permit the neoliberal parties to impose a pro-government policy from above.

What remains clear, is that the government has no intention of negotiating the end of neoliberalism. The government is not going to deliver on many of the negotiated settlements it has reached in recent weeks as a tactic to buy time and quell unrest. Without nationalizing natural gas, and without stopping payment on the external debt, the government will have no money with which to keep its promises.

It is obvious that continuation of the present socioeconomic system will do nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Bolivian working people. After twenty years of neoliberal misery, the rank-and-file members of the social movements, including the unions, who are the protagonists of the current conflicts, must design and pursue their own strategies for change from below. If some of today’s leaders of the unions and social movements prefer to go on serving their masters in the government and political parties, and if these leaders do not wish to fight alongside the rank and file in the struggle to dismantle neoliberalism, then the rank and file should toss out these "leaders."

It will be more difficult, however, for rank-and-file activists to break with the leadership and policies of the Movement Toward Socialism party (MAS) of Evo Morales. Nevertheless, the sad truth today is that the MAS is playing a traitorous role in the Bolivian revolutionary process. It has been clear for several years that Evo Morales has chosen the electoral road to power. He has abandoned any pretense of being a socialist–much less a revolutionary socialist–and has bet everything on the MAS’s ability to win the municipal elections at the end of the year. On the basis of this assumed victory, he will then launch his campaign to win the presidency in 2007. Such electoral ambitions explain why Morales refuses to support any social conflict that might threaten the survival of the existing state and its political institutions.

Reformist currents will always exist, and Morales has the right to become a reformist if he chooses. But what cannot be condoned or tolerated in the present context is Morales’s role as a creator of dual unions, as a splitter of hard-won unity between sectors of the urban and rural working class, and as a co-plotter with Mesa to divide and conquer the different groups rebelling across the country. Morales is better equipped than the government for these kinds of dirty deeds, and has adapted his politics to Mesa’s in order to silence the voices of a population that on numerous occasions has shown itself willing to rise up against neoliberalism and the capitalist state. Lamentably, the road to the end of neoliberalism in Bolivia runs not only through a rejection of the right-wing political parties but also through a complete rupture with the MAS leadership.

The second challenge that confronts the Bolivian revolution is that of uniting the forces of the rebellious sectors. The problem of unity has two dimensions: one is sectional, and the other is national. The sectional problem became clear–if it hadn’t been before–in the days immediately prior to May Day 2004. The government won a separate truce from three independent sectors: the Movimiento Sin Tierra (the Landless Movement), university students, and retired miners. One can imagine how different the launching of the COB’s general strike would have been if these sectors has continued their fight instead of settling, but this would have required a broader political perspective and a more general set of social demands. A few days into the strike, the teachers union showed the way forward when Mesa and Morales undertook a maneuver to split the social movement by announcing the suspension of Decree 27457, which would have decentralized to the states the national education system. Although they later succumbed to pressure to accept the truce, the teachers initially declared that the objective was not just to get rid of Decree 27457 but also to overturn Decree 21060, which established neoliberalism in Bolivia. They were right to suspect that the process called for in Decree 27457 could be restarted at any moment as long as Decree 21060 reigned as the supreme law of the land.

The sectionalism that defines most of the groups in struggle results from the perception that there does not really exist a global alternative to neoliberalism. After all, if no such alternative exists, logically all one can do is to look for and fight for better conditions for oneself within the (inhuman) limits of the neoliberal system. Instead of "Another world is possible," the implicit slogan of reformism becomes, "Another way to rob us is possible." I will return to this subject at the end of this essay.

The question of the indigenous nationalities will prove decisive for whatever unity is eventually achieved among the rank and file of the rebellious social groups. Everyone recognizes the need for a "worker-peasant alliance," but up to this point, such a project has not progressed much further than an alliance at the top between Jaime Solares of the COB and Felipe Quispe of the radical wing of the Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers (CSUTCB). The march to La Paz of delegated peasant leaders from the altiplano [high planes] on May 3 illustrates this well. The peasant leaders had come to La Paz in order to hold a meeting in which they were to debate whether they would join the COB’s general strike. Yet no contingent from the COB joined the peasants in the march, nor did any delegation from the COB greet them as they entered the city.

The idea here is that only on the basis of multiplying and accumulating common actions and experiences will it be possible to build trust and solidarity at the rank-and-file level. One of the most important results of the experience of struggling together in the events of October 2003, for example, was the beginning of rural and urban workers becoming conscious that they share vital interests.

It will be necessary for urban workers to support the right to self-determination of the rural workers–who are virtually all members of an indigenous group–in order to affirm and to consolidate trust among rural and urban workers. Some would argue that the question "class or nation?" has been resolved "organically" and superceded in Bolivia by the extremely high percentage of the Bolivian working class who have an indigenous heritage. But the history of the numerous betrayals by working-class leaders constitutes a formidable obstacle to strong unity among today’s Bolivian working class.¹

Centuries of oppression, decades of discrimination, and the vicious racism that still characterizes Bolivian society–these realities justify recognition of the right of self-determination for the thirty-seven indigenous groups of the Bolivian state. Some well-intentioned activists will ask: "How can we achieve greater unity if we are saying that the indigenous peoples have a right to separate from us?"

Russian Revolutionary V.I. Lenin offers a convincing answer to this important question. In the context of the demand for Polish independence from Russia during the First World War, Lenin affirmed that the path toward unity among Russian and Polish workers included the recognition by Russian workers of the right to self-determination of the Polish workers. If they did not support this right, Russian workers would objectively be transformed into "executioners of other peoples," insofar as they would become accomplices of the bourgeoisie in denying this right to oppressed nations. In such light, the support of workers in an oppressor nation for the right of self-determination of workers in an oppressed nation brings two positive results: (1) It goes far toward winning the trust of workers in the oppressed nations; and (2) It helps break the ideological bonds that tie workers in the oppressor nation to their own ruling class.

Lenin insisted that the right of self-determination is a political right that signified nothing other than the right to secede. At the same time, he argued that Polish socialists had the obligation to work for the greatest possible unity among nations and ethnicities. Without international working-class unity, neither Russian workers nor Polish workers could triumph over capitalist imperialism. Hence, Lenin suggested:

The situation is, indeed, bewildering, but there is a way out in which all participants remain internationalists: the Russian and German [after Germany’s annexation of Poland] Social-Democrats by demanding for Poland unconditional "freedom to secede"; the Polish Social-Democrats by working for the unity of the proletarian struggle in both the small and big countries.2

Thus, non-indigenous Bolivian workers should affirm the demand by indigenous workers for the right of self-determination, up to and including secession and independence. And socialists within the indigenous working class–both in the cities as well as in the countryside–should argue that the unity of the various nationalities of the Bolivian working class in a single political entity will make them a stronger political force and lead eventually to a society based on greater solidarity.³

The third challenge is to articulate a clear direction for the Bolivian struggle–and to win the majority of Bolivians to supporting it. At the moment, it is the COB–much more so than any other social organization on the ground–that is attempting to fill this role. Presently the COB is leading the movement for nationalizing and industrializing gas, as well as for the abrogation of Decree 21060. Of course, it is quite likely that the leadership of the COB does not think they can overturn Decree 21060 in the near future, and so they go to the negotiating table without Decree 21060 on the agenda. But as far as the gas issue is concerned, the COB emphatically does believe that nationalization can be won, with or without a referendum, and that the COB can and should play a central role in winning it.

What is missing in the Bolivian revolutionary process is a mass movement based on the struggle for socialism as the explicit alternative to neoliberalism. It would be immensely important to call for the nationalization of gas, or to demand increased funding for the universities, or to halt the devolution of the public health system to the states. The reality, however, is that none of these changes would be secure so long as neoliberalism continues as the framework within which the socioeconomic activity of the country takes place. If more money is found for students this year, it can be taken away next year. In six months the government might decide to reopen the process of turning over the public health system to the states–and later to private companies. And with a corrupt political elite in congress, and the mighty International Monetary Fund pressuring them at every turn, the transnational oil companies can continue to control Bolivian natural gas even if it is nationalized on paper.

Nationalization is part of the response to neoliberalism. But the most important component is the self-government and self-determination of ordinary working people in Bolivia–in other words, their control over the natural and social wealth of the country. Such a truly democratic form of power is called socialism: a socialism created and sustained from below, and not "socialism" bestowed and managed from above by state bureaucrats and career politicians. Neoliberal governments can be overthrown from here to eternity. But until a mass movement succeeds in replacing neoliberalism with socialism, the Bolivian people will never escape the yoke of capitalism and imperialism.

It is necessary to build a revolutionary organization in Bolivia for three reasons. First, such an organization can fight ideologically to have socialism fully and openly debated as an alternative to neoliberalism. If it is true that some sectors of the Bolivian social movement are "anti-capitalist," not all of them are. Moreover, in order to dismantle capitalism in Bolivia once and for all, anti-capitalist consciousness must develop into a working-class consciousness that can help drive a conscious movement for socialism. A revolutionary organization is indispensable for channeling an ideological debate capable of convincing ordinary working Bolivians that there really exists a positive alternative to capitalism.

The second reason is that an organization is needed that is completely dedicated to forging unity among the distinct social sectors in struggle and whose primary concern is for the interests of the working class as a whole. This means that such an organization would not only defend the economic interests of all workers, without sectionalism, but also that it would advance the political and cultural interests of the working class in building a society free from national and gender oppressions. Again, at present, the COB seeks to fulfill these functions. Yet history shows that there are limitations to union-based activism, or what is known as syndicalism, and there are limitations even to revolutionary syndicalism. At certain moments, union leaders mobilize their rank and file; at others they demobilize them based on agreements they have signed with the bosses or the government. Furthermore, even revolutionary unions have difficulties projecting a coherent alternative to capitalism; after all, a union is an organism whose purpose is to mediate the struggle between capital and labor. These and other considerations explain why the fight against neoliberalism requires the presence not only of combative unions, such as the COB and the CSUTCB, but also the action and influence of a political organization wholly committed to the project of revolutionary socialism.

Finally, the rhythm of events themselves strongly indicates the need to create a revolutionary organization. Although it began slowly in September, the gas rebellion of October 2003 eventually handed the unions, the social movements, and the insurrectionary masses the space of one week in which neoliberalism could have been destroyed–that is to say, the space of a week whose outcome might not have been a mere changing of the neoliberal guard. Rather, the outcome could have been a solid advance away from a society controlled by the transnational corporations and their national lackeys and toward a society planned and directed by the ordinary working people of Bolivia. Evo Morales and the MAS, however, along with the supporters of Sánchez de Lozada and the U.S. embassy, determined a different result that maintained the conditions of capitalist and imperialist accumulation. What was lacking was a revolutionary organization that had sufficient social implantation, organizational force, experience in struggle, and political confidence to oppose the neoliberals and their reformist allies–an organization that could have posed socialism as an alternative to yet another edition of neoliberalism.

Some in Bolivia argue that a revolutionary socialist organization is unnecessary because the social movements already possess sufficient organization and strength to defeat neoliberalism. But they failed to do so in October 2003; instead they acquiesced to a continuista government. Nor did the social movements even pose the need to get rid of capitalism. The truth is that there are very few voices in the social movements today that support a revolutionary strategy and socialism from below as alternatives to neoliberalism.

There are others who argue that objective conditions have not sufficiently matured to enable the building of a revolutionary socialist organization in Bolivia. But a revolutionary organization cannot be built overnight–nor can it be built in one week, even if that week is one of ardent class combat, of which there is no shortage in Bolivia. The decisive factor in Bolivia today is the subjective factor. It is no voluntarist fallacy to suggest that Bolivian workers should start to create such an organization today.

Where to begin? With the most militant activists from the October rebellion and the current COB offensive–with the men and women who enjoy the respect and confidence of their co-workers in the workplace, in the barrios, and in the universities. These workers from the country and the city–full-timers, part-timers, unemployed, landless, and homeless workers–should gather in rank-and-file meetings small and large, and at every level of society to draw the lessons of October 2003, to debate the limitations of reformism, and to envision what concrete meaning they would want to give to revolutionary socialism. On the basis of such a broad anti-capitalist discussion, it is possible to arrive at a few basic agreements of principle that can breathe life into an ideological and political battle for revolutionary socialism. And thus there can emerge an organization that is worthy of the great events and enormous challenges that ordinary working people face in Bolivia today.

Revolutionaries should never underestimate the possibilities for workers to develop their own political class consciousness in the process of struggle. Real people can find real solutions to the real problems outlined in this article.

On June 5, in the middle of a barricaded highway, dozens of indigenous leaders–side by side with rank-and-file union leaders and the Rural Teachers Strike Committee of La Paz–ratified the "Interunion Pact Between Rural and Urban Workers." This act followed the signing of a "blood pact" on June 3 in which the Confederation of Bolivian Peasant Workers, the Confederation of Bolivian Factory Workers, the Federation of Bolivian Mine Workers, the La Paz Rural Teachers Federation, the La Paz State Labor Confederation, and several other organizations pledged to build and to strengthen the struggle of the COB for nationalization and against neoliberalism.

The Interunion Pact took physical shape that same night, with a march that was led by the factory workers’ unions, whose decision to join the COB strike marks the full entry of the urban working class into the anti-neoliberal campaign. Subsequently, on June 4, the Interunion Pact was unanimously approved by a general assembly of rural teachers and quickly remitted to the peasant communities, whose leaders ratified it on June 5 after hours of communal discussion and debate. The Interunion Pact calls for the re-nationalization of all gas and mineral resources and it rejects the five questions of the Mesa government’s gas referendum as comprising nothing more than a pro-imperialist deception.

Union leaders who support the MAS vehemently opposed the Interunion Pact using pro-government and anti-COB arguments. At the end of one heated session, the MAS leaders were censured and beaten by the peasants and teachers. As reported by www.econoticiasbolivia.com, the leaders were accused of being "agents of the government of Carlos Mesa and Evo Morales." The MAS officials attempted to flee in the face of growing rank-and-file hostility, but a group of peasants caught one leader, whom they proceeded to chicotear–a chicotazo is a kind of very hard, very painful spanking–one that is delivered to scabs by striking workers.⁴

1 On the composition of the contemporary Bolivian working class, see Roberto Sáenz, "Crítica del romanticismo ‘anticapitalista,’" Socialismo o barbarie, número 16 (marzo de 2004), available at http://www.mas.org.ar/.

2 V.I. Lenin, "Speech on the National Question, April 29 [1917]," Collected Works, Vol. 24 (Moscow: International Publishers, 1963), 298.

3 For a full discussion of Lenin’s perspective on the national question, see Tom Lewis, "Marxism and Nationalism, Part 1," ISR 13 (August—September 2000), and "Marxism and Nationalism, Part 2," ISR 14 (October—_November 2000), available online at http://isreview.org/issues/13_/marxism_nationalism_part1.shtml and http://isreview.org/issues/14/marxism_nationalism_part2.shtml.

4 For a full report on this event, see Miguel Pinto Parabá, "Nacionalización une a campesinos, maestros y obreros," June 6, 2004, available at http://www.econoticiasbolivia.com.