The Bolivian Revolution Goes Left:
Transformation of Parties and Classes Under Fire

Juan Rey

Labor Action, 27th October, 1952.

Workers Press for Socialist Change

Santiago, September. – Under the pressure of the workers and Indian peasants of Bolivia, the victorious Nationalist party [MNR] has promised to nationalize the mines, and to carry through agrarian reforms and changes in the socio – economic structure of the country, as the basic objectives of the “national revolution”. The workers and peasants are therefore supporting the Nationalist Party in power under President Paz Estenssoro and waiting for the realization of the promises.

But the social content of this programme is understood in different ways by the Nationalists on the one hand and by the workers on the other. By the nationalization of the mines the MNR Nationalists mean a simple bureaucratic reform, the intervention of the state in the administration of the mines. But by the nationalization of the mines the workers mean their confiscation without compensation and their administration by the workers themselves. This is the basic class difference between the workers and the petty bourgeoisie, between Socialism and capitalism.

President Paz has promised nationalization, but he does not really think that it will be necessary to carry it through. It is true that at the last meeting of the Central Obrera Boliviana [the Bolivian Federation of Labour] he said, under the visible pressure of the masses: “I see now that the nationalization of the mines is indispensable, and I promise to do it”. But in a conversation with the writer Diez de Medina, Paz said “that he thinks the nationalization of the mines will mean bankruptcy, but nevertheless, he must do it”.

And he really must do it, because the great mining corporations have begun to lay off workers and close the mines, as in the case of the Compania Unificada in Potosi and the American Smelting Company in Corocora. In this situation the government has to appoint its own managers for the mines in order to avoid the stoppage of production.

Revolutionary Method

And so the objective situation is imposing revolutionary methods on the government. With the growth in strength of the workers’ movement, the power of the big mine owners is declining and losing its former weight. As things stand now, the big bourgeoisie cannot engage the workers and the Nationalist government in battle. The government managers took over their posts without any resistance. Now the people are waiting for the decree nationalizing the mines, as a result of the “study” presented by the government commission which was appointed for that purpose.

Opposition to the government’s policy of mine statification is strong, not from the right, but from the working class left wing, even from Nationalist workers who are members of the governing MNR Nationalist Party. This is so because the workers do not agree with its bureaucratic methods of managing the mines. They fear lest statification of the mines creates a new bureaucracy which might exploit and squeeze the workers even more than the present mine owners.

Therefore the workers organised in the Central Obrera are demanding the nationalization of the mines without compensation, under workers’ control. This means that the workers are demanding revolutionary expropriation – they want the mines to pass over into their own hands and be operated under the control of workers’ committees, not of government bureaucrats who dream of imposing their own economic and political power over labour.

For the Nationalist party and government, the nationalization of the mines means a state capitalist reform; the appropriation of the mines by the government party; the creation of a new bourgeoisie, a new Rosca [mining barons]; the monopolisation of the nation’s wealth by a new privileged class, with economic and political power over the workers and the workers’ trade unions, over the state machine and the whole Bolivian people.

Latent Conflict

The workers instinctively fear this danger which has been created by the situation which they brought into being, and they fear giving dangerous powers to their “own” party, which they have pushed into power and supported. The Central Obrera Boliviana, which was formed by Juan Lechin, the government minister of the mines, is now the sole opposition capable of exerting pressure upon the government and compelling it to change its policy.

Thus the objective historical process, the need for changes in the socio – economic structure of the country, has created a new political situation in Bolivia and brought out the latent social conflict between the Nationalist petty bourgeoisie and the working class, between the governing Nationalist Party and the workers’ unions, which are still officially backing the former. This social conflict is the motor force of the imminent social and political changes which loom ahead in the land.

Unions Adopt Marxist Position

Santiago, October. – On my last trip to Bolivia and its capital, La Paz, I found that great political changes have taken place in the country. By destroying the political machine of the Right, including its military organizations, the workers have now become the only real political and social force, which, if it so wishes, can immediately conquer political power and introduce social and political reforms in accordance with its own programme.

The victorious and armed working class is the decisive social, political, and military force in the Altiplano [the Bolivian plateau]. The government of the MNR, the Nationalist Party, is holding on through the support of the armed working class, not through the strength of its own party.

The workers – that is, the workers’ unions – are united in the Central Obrera Boliviana, which was organised by Lechin as a supporter of the Nationalist Party. This Bolivian workers’ centre looks like an imitation of Peronist policy, and the basis for a new nationalist regime.

But si duo faciunt idem non est idem – although both may do the same thing, it is not the same thing: in Peronist Argentina the workers’ unions are subordinated to the regime as its obedient instrument, because Argentine capitalism is stronger than Bolivian capitalism, the Peronist government party machine is stronger than the Bolivian MNR, and its military machine is also much stronger.

In Bolivia the workers’ unions were, to be sure, founded and dominated by the MNR and raised up as the MNR’s road to power and as the base of its regime. But now, because of the weakness of Bolivian capitalism and the weakness of the Nationalist Party, the unions are in reality the unconscious masters of the situation.

The “labour ministers” in the cabinet, Lechin and Boutron, who are both members of the MNR and leaders of trade unions, have to give their reports to the leading committee of the Central Obrera – so that this leading committee of the Central is virtually a dual government, an embryonic workers’ government.

As we have previously reported, when the government delayed the nationalization of the mines, the workers’ unions adopted a resolution calling upon the “labour ministers” to leave the cabinet. The government of Paz Estenssoro then solemnly promised to nationalize the mines, and the Central Obrera authorised the “labour ministers” to stay in the cabinet. It also demanded increased “workers’ representation” in the government, a demand which has not been satisfied up to now.

The official organ of the Central Obrera Rebelion has published a very interesting and important document entitled The Ideological Position of the Bolivian Working Class. The most important part of this document concerns the character of the Bolivian revolution.

”The Bolivian revolution”, says Rebelion, “must have the character of a combined revolution – bourgeois – democratic in its immediate objectives and Socialist in its uninterrupted results. It is quite impossible to separate the two phases of the revolution; that means that the workers in power must not halt at bourgeois - democratic limits, but must strike ever more deeply at the rights of private property, going over to Socialist methods, and in this way giving the revolution a permanent character”.

Step Forward

This passage signifies a most important theoretical advance for revolutionary Marxist thinking in Bolivia. For years we have been fighting against the theory of “democratic revolution” in Bolivia – that is, of bourgeois democratic revolution which stops short of Socialist change. This theory has been supported not only by the Stalinists but also by the “Trotskyist” POR, especially by G. Lora, as the basis for political action by the workers. This outlived theory was the basis of the opportunist policy of the Stalinist party [the PIR] after l946, and is also the reason for its bankruptcy – and therefore indirectly is the reason for the victory of the MNR in l952.

Now, finally, the most important workers’ organization in the country has overcome this false theory and accepted the correct position, in effect the theory of the “permanent revolution” – that is, the Socialist theory developed by Trotsky. The Bolivian working class has taken a great step forward and has proved that it is really taking the road to revolution.

In this situation only a different appraisal of the international situation divides, in my view, revolutionary Marxist thought from the most important workers’ organization [...].

The publication of Rebelion provoked consternation and fright within the MNR, especially in its right wing circles. A group of ministers and Nationalist leaders countered by publishing a “Manifesto” against “Communism”. But President Paz, aware of his own weakness and of his own party’s weakness, declared that no-one had the right to publish a political statement for the MNR except its political committee [which consists of Paz himself, plus Siles and Alvarez Plata]. In this diplomatic form the Anti-Communist Manifesto directed against the Central Obrera was repudiated.

This was done by the same Paz Estenssoro who has always himself aggressively attacked “communism” ; but this time he would be attacking the entire organized working class, which is backing his own regime. He was prudent enough to refrain from doing so.

But through his offices Juan Lechin was led to make the statement that The Ideological Position of the Bolivian Working Class is only a private draft and not a definitive programme, and that such a definitive programme would be adopted by the workers’ congress in January. Thus the conflict between the government and the Central Obrera was smoothed over this time.

Pushed to Left

But the conflict is latent, and the problem of nationalization is renewing it right along; because by nationalization the Central Obrera means the handing over of the mines to the workers, and not to the state. There is much discussion about this problem right now, and the next session of the Central Obrera is scheduled to take up and ratify an Open Letter to President Paz about the modus operandi of nationalization.

It is very characteristic of the political composition of the Central Obrera’s committee. The largest faction is that of the POR; next comes the group of Lechin and Torres, that is, the Nationalist wing of the unions; and the Stalinists are in third place with scarcely five votes. Though it is true that the POR is organizationally and ideologically very weak, and that Lechin and Torres are retreating and vacillating, it is also true that the spontaneous workers’ movement is very strong, and is pushing the Central Obrera forward.

The objective historical and social process in Bolivia is pushing the social forces to revolutionary solutions, and the counter – revolutionary camp is disorganised, weak and incapable of any resistance. It depends only on the workers to understand their own power, and to grasp the fact that only a workers’ and peasants’ government can realize the programme of the Bolivian revolution; that it must be a working class revolution, even though it has to solve immediate bourgeois – democratic tasks.

The Nationalist regime, which is hanging on to power only because of the workers’ support, will fall if this support is withdrawn. Therefore, an enormous responsibility rests upon the Central Obrera and upon the strongest group within it, the POR.

Transformed POR Leads Workers

Santiago, October. – Let me begin this dispatch by putting recent Bolivian events in the setting of the country’s political development.

For nearly the first twenty years of this century Bolivia was governed by the Liberal Party as the champion of capitalist development on the Altiplano. But capitalism came to Bolivia very late, and the country’s colonial conditions could not open up the normal possibilities for its development. The Liberal Party was replaced by the Republicans of Saavedra, and then by the genuine Republican Party, Socialists and Nationalists.

With the Russian revolution the modern working class movement also began, and with it the organization of the modern Left. The Bolivian Socialist Workers Party [PSOB] arose, and later the Stalinist and Trotskyist groups.

After the defeat by Paraguay in the Gran Chaco War, the military dictatorships of Toro and Busch [the latter with “Socialistic” tendencies] took over. Then the traditional parties were restored, after Busch’s assassination, under the governments of Quintanilla and Penaranda. The reaction against the murder of Busch and the restoration of the traditional rightist parties led to the formation of the nationalist tendency of the MNR [Revolutionary Nationalist Movement] led by Paz Estenssoro.

This was a time of thriving success for nationalism in a world overshadowed by Hitler’s victories and Stalin’s expansion. The influence of Nazism was powerful in Bolivia.

MNR’s Past

The l943 coup d’etat against the Penaranda government was made by the semi – fascist military logia which called itself Razon de la Patria, or for short “Radepa”; it was politically backed by the MNR. The first Nationalist regime was a coalition between Radepa and the MNR under the presidency of Villaroel, an obscure colonel who was a member of Radepa, and with Paz Estenssoro as finance minister.

Backed by Hitler and Peron, this regime vigorously fought both the Right and the Left, both the great mining barons [the Rosca] and the independent workers’ movement as represented by the PSOB and the Stalinists [PIR] and by the independent trade unions. It was under Villaroel’s regime that some of the leaders of the bourgeois opposition were murdered – the famous “crime of November”; the tin magnate Hochschild was kidnapped, and some millions in ransom demanded; and the leader of the Stalinists also barely escaped with his life.

In l946 a coalition of the Rightist bloc and the Stalinist PIR defeated the Villaroel regime, exploiting the differences between the MNR and the military clique and utilizing the crisis of the regime and the country and the defeat of Hitler in the war. Villaroel was hanged from a lamp-post together with his closest collaborators.

Big Changes

In spite of the fact that this revolution had a big popular base, including not only the bourgeois-democratic parties but also those of the middle class and the working class, the resulting coalition between the traditional Rightist parties and the Stalinist PIR remained absolutely sterile, incapable of any revolutionary reforms – stupid and reactionary.

The masses waited for a new revolutionary policy, the heralded “anti-fascist” and “progressive” policy, for a change in the social, economic and political structure of the country, now that the “Nazi” government was out. But they saw only the old reactionary “democratic” policy, corruption, robbery of the public treasury, persecution of the workers’ movement, all the old sins and delinquencies of the feudo-bourgeois regime.

The big mine owners’ domination of the government, traditional in Bolivia, and the lack of the social and political reforms which the working class looked for, brought about the regeneration of the MNR as a mass movement. The MNR absorbed not only the middle class supporters of the traditional bourgeois parties, but also of the Left, the PSOB and the Stalinist PIR, and it awakened new sections of the working class to consciousness and activity.

The trade unions which had been dominated by Villaroel were now transformed into the main organizations of popular opposition to the Hertzog – Urriolagoitia regime. But in the course of this opposition struggle and civil war, the character of the MNR changed – from a party based upon the middle classes to one with its mass base among the workers, although its programme remained a nationalist one.

This process of ideological and political polarization within the MNR – between the old leaders and cadres and the new working class masses that had flowed into it – came to light after the coup d’etat of the April of this year, when the workers transformed it into an armed insurrection against the hated Rosca, the mining capitalist power.

The POR’s Evolution

The ensuing civil war not only destroyed the old bourgeois government and military machine, but also changed the character of the MNR. The fighting Nationalist workers not only changed themselves in the process of struggle but also transformed the whole political structure of the country.

Now the old feudo-bourgeois apparatus of the Bolivian state is smashed, and the new political machine of the MNR, seeking to supplant it, is running into the spontaneous but stubborn opposition of its “own” workers’ organizations, above all the trade unions which it had controlled.

What is especially interesting is the ideological development and political role of the POR, the Trotskyist party affiliated with the Fourth International, in the course of this general process of political change in the country.

Founded as a breakaway from the PSOB, the POR has not played any big political role, though active in the periphery of the workers’ movement against the Stalinists. In composition it has been middle class, and this is related to its display of a certain amount of sympathy with the MNR, and close relations with it.

The people who fought in the MNR and the POR came from the same social layers, and they came to a mutual understanding in spite of their different political language: the MNR talked about the “national revolution” and the POR about the “bourgeois-democratic revolution”; the MNR talked in totalitarian Peronist-Hitlerite terms, and the POR’s jargon was half “Trotskyist”, half “Stalinist” “anti-imperialism”.

Both fought against the “plutocracy”, against the “Rosca”, against imperialism, against the bourgeois Right and the Stalinist “Left”, and so formed a political alliance whose personal expression was the friendship between the Nationalist leader of the mine workers, Lechin, and G. Lora, the leading militant and writer of the POR. Lora’s Pulacayo Thesis, based on the concept of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, was the theoretical expression of this period as the programme for a coalition government between the POR and the MNR to carry through the revolution.

New Role

After the armed workers conquered power for the MNR in April, the situation changed as a result of the pressure of the working class masses on both the MNR and the POR.

The workers took very seriously the promises of the MNR to nationalize the mines, to institute agrarian reforms, and to change the socio – economic character of the country. But the two forces understood these slogans differently; the Nationalists looked to state capitalist reforms a la Peron, while the workers fought for Socialist change, i.e., workers’ control of the mines, the land to the peasants, and Socialist transformations in the economy.

The POR, closer to the workers than the MNR, could not be deaf to these demands of the working class.

In the latest social and political split between the MNR and the Nationalist workers, between the Nationalist Party and the workers’ trade unions, the POR is growing into the role of the spokesman of the workers.

This is especially shown within the Central Obrera Boliviana, where the POR group has won ideological leadership and has put out the important political document on The Ideological Position of the Bolivian Working Class, in which it has abandoned the Lora concept of the “national” or “bourgeois democratic” revolution, as we discussed in our last article.

The relations between the POR and the MNR are different now from what they were before April. The new leadership of the POR looks very critically at the actions of the MNR, and especially at its “left wing” of Lechin, Boutron, Torres, etc. The spell of the POR-MNR alliance has been broken by the real political role which the MNR is playing, by the reactionary line of the government and the vacillating retreat of Lechin & Company.

At the big demonstration of the Central in September, Lechin and Boutron absented themselves completely, having been taken “ill”. In the present conflict over the modus operandi of mine nationalization, Lechin and his group act as mouthpieces of the government within the Central’s leading committee. They try to gain time for the government and to postpone issues.

Conflict Ahead

These healthy developments shown by the POR reflect the growing and spontaneous workers’ movement and its pressure. The leadership of the POR has also changed, passing over the period of Lora and his palship with Lechin.

Lora, the creator of the POR-MNR alliance, probably frightened by his own work, has retired from the POR, and is publishing Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution, presumably for the education of the POR militants, and perhaps as a sign of his own repentance.

The new leaders of the POR are authentic leaders of the unions and the Central. With the publication of the new theoretical line on the Bolivian revolution, the “Lorist” period has been put behind, and now begins a stubborn ideological fight between the MNR and the POR for leadership over the workers.

It is characteristic of the Bolivian situation that the thesis published by the Central was better and more radical than the resolutions of the 9th Conference of the POR, which were very much the old “Fourthist” ballast.

The future of political development in Bolivia lies in the freeing of the workers from their hypnosis by the MNR.This process began with the conflict between the Central and the government on the nationalization of the mines, etc. In this process the POR can play a big and responsible political role.

In spite of the fact that for years I have been a stubborn critic of the POR, it is with the greatest satisfaction that I testify to its progress and healthy evolution.

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