Bolivia: a new phase begins
EVO MORALES of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS)
was swept to power in Bolivia’s presidential elections in December 2005.
With more than 53%, he won a higher share of the vote than any president
in the last 30 years.
Morales’ election represents a new phase in the
struggle of the masses in Bolivia and has already had significant
international repercussions. To the irritation of George Bush and US
imperialism, the first visits made by Morales were to Havana and
Caracas, where he announced that Bolivia was now joining a struggle
against neo-liberalism and forming an "anti-imperialist front" with Cuba
and Venezuela.
His nearest rival, Tuto Quiroga, the favoured
candidate of the ruling class and US imperialism, trailed behind with a
mere 28.5% of the vote. Even in the wealthy province of Santa Cruz,
where the vast oil and gas reserves are concentrated, support for
Morales was surprisingly high at 33%.
This overwhelming victory is a consequence of the
massive revolutionary uprising of the miners, peasants, public-sector
workers and others against the former president, Carlos Mesa. This
tremendous movement, which included insurrectionary features, drove Mesa
from office in May-June 2005, as tens of thousands took to the streets
demanding the nationalisation of Bolivia’s rich gas reserves.
Mesa was the second president in two years to be
overthrown by a mass movement. His predecessor, Sanchez Lozada, was
forced out in October 2003. These movements formed part of a revolt
against neo-liberalism and privatisation which has swept Latin America
over the last five years. In Bolivia, the mass struggles began in 2001
in Cochabamba, where a popular uprising in the city prevented the
privatisation of the water industry.
Morales’s landslide is a consequence of these mass
protests and also directly reflects the struggle of indigenous peoples.
For the first time, a candidate from the indigenous people who make up
60% of the Bolivian population has been elected. The emergence of the
struggles of indigenous peoples in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and
Chile has been an important feature of the movement against
neo-liberalism in recent years.
In Bolivia, this is particularly important. The
majority indigenous population has been left in virtual destitution in
the cities, ruled over by an elite ruling class of European descent. In
El Alto, which has been at the forefront of recent struggles, 75% of the
population barely survive on less than $2 per day. Notorious for the
most unequal wealth distribution in Latin America, the richest 20% of
Bolivia’s population have an income 41 times greater than the poorest
20%.
The election of Morales was a vote against the
pro-imperialist, neo-liberal policies of the ruling class and a demand
for change. Above all, those who voted for him were demanding that gas
and oil reserves be used for the benefit of the mass of the population
rather than the multi-national giants which have economically raped the
country. Enjoying a profits bonanza, companies like Exxon (USA), Repsol
(Spain), British Gas (UK) and Petrobas (Brazil) have sucked oil and gas
from the country like vampires. They have seen the amount of tax paid to
exploit these resources slashed from 50% to a mere 18% during the 1990s.
This giveaway went side-by-side with the privatisation of the former
state oil company.
A vote for Morales and MAS was a vote for the
nationalisation of these industries. These developments represent an
important change in political consciousness. For the first time since
the 1990s and the pro-market ideological offensive launched by
imperialism (following the collapse of the bureaucratic dictatorships
and planned economies of the former USSR and Eastern Europe), a mass
movement has erupted demanding nationalisation of a key sector of the
economy. This follows the devastating experience of privatisation which
ravaged Latin America throughout the 1990s.
Despite the vote and hopes that the new government
will introduce measures against the interests of capitalism, significant
sections of the workers’ movement are wary of what Morales will do now
he is in office. The main trade union confederation, COB, issued a
statement giving the new government three months to nationalise gas and
energy or it would take to the streets. The teachers’ confederation has
given the government two months to raise wages.
These doubts about Morales’s determination to
challenge capitalism exist because of his role in previous mass
movements. During 2003, he was in Europe and played no role until he
returned. After Lozada was overthrown, he helped prop up Mesa’s
government. When a referendum was called with rigged questions on the
issue of ownership of the oil industry, the mass organisations called
for a boycott. Morales and the MAS leadership urged participation, which
was partly responsible for his formal expulsion from COB at the time. In
2005, he vacillated over support for nationalisation, counterposing
support for a 50% tax on the profits of the private companies. What role
his government will now play is the central question facing the mass
movement.
One of his first announcements was to reduce
presidential and ministerial salaries by 50%. He also announced that he
will not wear a tie at the swearing-in ceremony because it is a symbol
of the ruling elite but will wear traditional clothes of the indigenous
peoples. These steps are undoubtedly very popular.
Yet he has also sought to reassure sections of the
ruling class. Apart from Venezuela and Cuba, he rapidly visited Spain
and other European countries. The Spanish oil company, Repsol, the
second largest foreign investor, has $800 million invested in Bolivia.
Morales tried to reassure Spanish monopolies that
his government could collaborate with them. The new Bolivian government
is "going to nationalise but it will not confiscate or expropriate". A
"symbolic nationalisation" was what he promised in Madrid. He seems to
be suggesting that the gas and oil would be ‘nationalised’ but the
assets of the companies would be left in private hands, and contracts
renegotiated with the likes of Repsol and Exxon.
Morales also spoke of the need to take action
against "bandit" companies, but assured the Spanish ruling class that he
does not consider Repsol and other Spanish companies to be "bandits":
"Spanish companies can play the role of foreign investors like a motor
for development, with a stable market but combining it with social
progress". In other words, it is a question of building a more
progressive, social capitalist economy – capitalism with a more human
face. This was the same idea that Hugo Chávez initially defended when he
first came to power in 1998.
In an interview with the Journal of Bolivian
Business, Morales’s running mate for the vice-presidency, Álvaro García
Linera, spelt out the programme. Asked if MAS wanted a socialist
government, he replied: "No, no way, because it’s not viable. It’s not
viable because socialism can only be built on the basis of a strong
proletarian presence… you don’t build socialism on the basis of a family
economy; you build it on the basis of industry, which there is none in
Bolivia". He argued for an "Andean capitalism": "A strong state and that
is capitalism; the state is not socialism, it’s a strong state in
hydrocarbons, foreign investment, local private investment, the family
economy and small businesses… It’s not even a mixed economy". Once this
task is achieved then, maybe, socialism will be posed. For Linera this
is off the agenda in Bolivia for at least 50 years!
Developing of industry, land reform, establishing
parliamentary democracy and unifying the nation have been the historic
tasks of the capitalist class. In the modern epoch, domination by major
imperialist countries and the weakness of the local capitalist class,
mean that the latter has been incapable of resolving these questions of
the bourgeois democratic revolution.
Even with large state intervention in the economy
(for example, Peru, Bolivia and other countries in the past), capitalism
has proved incapable of resolving these tasks. Yet this seems to be what
Morales is now advocating in Bolivia along with Chávez in Venezuela.
Only the working class together with the poor
peasants and others exploited by capitalism can complete these tasks by
taking over the running of society and through the introduction of a
democratic, state-planned economy and by spreading such a revolution to
other more industrialised and economically developed countries.
Nonetheless, Morales in Bolivia, Chávez in Venezuela
and Néstor Kirchner in Argentina represent a significant break with the
dominant neo-liberalism of the 1990s. All have been swept to power by
the masses as part of a mass rejection of neo-liberalism and
privatisation. All to varying degrees have adopted policies of greater
state intervention in the economy, including some nationalisations,
price controls and other similar measures.
Tony Saunois
|