The 1952 Revolution

by José Villa

Part 11

Turn The COB Into A Soviet!

For Lenin and Trotsky, the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat could be based only on bodies like the Russian Soviets of 1917. In every revolution it is vital to struggle to give Soviet features to the mass organs and organs of power created by the exploited. A Soviet is an organ of struggle of the proletariat whose delegates are directly elected and revocable in rank-and-file assemblies, which include all workers, small- holders, peasants, soldiers, housewives, unemployed and other oppressed sectors of the area. While the unions are bodies which unite workers in an enterprise or branch of production, Soviets are territorial organisms which encompass the broadest masses, both non-unionised and unionised.

In the eyes of the POR, the COB, like a mass meeting or an open town council meeting, was a Soviet. Not every Soviet has dual or alternative power, Not every dual power is a Soviet. A parallel power could be a parliament, an army or another institution which possesses an armed force and governmental authority over a significant part of a country.

The COB, although it had Soviet tendencies, was an organism with trade union, vertical and bureaucratic features. “One of the gravest errors in the organisation of the COB consisted in its originating from the top summit leaders, who would soon end up completely tied to the petty bourgeois government, and it crystallised through the middle layers of leadership (...) The correct thing would have been to proceed in the opposite way, that is to say, from the bottom up. The workers adhered to the COB through their trade union leaders (...) The founders of the COB called upon the old leaders and not on the democratically elected rank-and-file delegates. This organisational defect already contained the cause of its infirmity, which eased its bureaucratisation, its isolation from the masses and the skilful control of it by the government”. (54) (La Revolución Boliviana, G. Lora, p.262-263).

The COB delegates were neither elected nor controlled and subject to recall through rank-and-file mass meetings. The first congress of the COB took place two and a half years after its foundation. The bureaucracy did everything possible to run the union with boss’ type bureaucratic criteria. A revolutionary party should have struggled for the immediate organisation of a congress a few days or weeks after it was founded. Only in this way could the COB have been democratised and have acquired soviet-type features. However, the POR was in the top leadership of the COB and did not object to a bureaucratic structure which allowed it to get along better with Lechín, in order accommodate to him.

The COB was founded at a meeting called by the Miners’ Federation on 17th April 1952. The leaderships of the confederations of factory workers, railway workers and peasants, the federation of bank employees and allied branches, commercial and industrial employees, and graphical, construction, bricklayers and bakers unions took part in that assembly. (55) (Movimento obrero y processos politícos en Bolivia, Jorge Lazarte, p.6). Note that fact that the squatters, the unemployed and rank-and-file soldiers were not organised within it. The COB aimed to be a union centre based on leaderships elected at labour congresses every ‘X’ years. A Soviet should be based on all the oppressed sectors and directly elected at rank and file assemblies. In this way, the organisation can grow and be de-bureaucratised. This meeting elected an executive committee which held office until the congress in October 1954. It was headed by Lechín (Executive Secretary), Germán Butrón (General secretary) and Mario Torres (Secretary of Relations). As the two key figures in the COB had to be ministers, the job of day-to-day leadership at the centre fell on PORists like Edwin Moller (Organisation Secretary), José Zegada (Minuting Secretary) or Miguel Alandia Pantoja (Director of the Press). “This first Management Committee was declared provisional until the election of a proper committee by a national congress which would meet shortly.” (56) (ibid., p.7). However, that congress took place with extreme delay, after the COB had ceased to be an alternative dual power and had surrendered to the official bourgeois power.

The COB developed in the same way like all organs of ‘popular power’ that bourgeois nationalists governments create. The ‘Committees in Defence of the Revolution’ in Nicaragua, the ‘Shoras’ in Iran or the ‘Popular Assemblies’ in various nationalist processes are organisations which unite union leaders and those of mass bodies, to ensure that they support nationalist regimes or projects. Instead of structuring themselves as alternative workers’ power which fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to consolidate all power, these organisms are committed to building a popular basis for nationalism. They use ‘anti-imperialism’ in order to discipline the masses and to maintain themselves against their enemies.

Dual power cannot last for long. One power must rule over the other. If a workers’ power does not crush that of the bourgeoisie then the latter will be imposed (whether via bloody liquidation or by regimentation and domestication). (57)

(As Stuart King so rightly says:

“Is not Workers Power absolutely right when it describes the COB as an ‘embryo’ or ‘proto-Soviet’ which could have developed into a full Soviet only through political struggle against the bonapartist project of the MNR? This would have involved concentrating on building Soviets both in and outside La Paz, drawing in and organising peasant syndicates in the localities, calling for the construction of rank and file soldiers committees in the army, drawing their delegates into the Soviets, strengthening and placing under Soviet discipline the militias, and ensuring that all delegates were elected by rank and file factory and workplace committees subject to immediate recall”. Permanent Revolution, No.2, p.36).

The POR did not fight to make the COB soviet. To do so required a constant daily battle against the MNR and the Lechínist bureaucracy. On the contrary, the POR, was one of the main causes of the COB being limited, bureaucratised and tied to officialdom.

Previous Chapter: All Power To The COB!
Next Chapter: The MNR-POR Government