Bolivia: bitter lessons of defeat

[p022] Bitter lessons of defeat By TIM WOHLFORTH: Reprinted from the ‘Bulletin’, weekly organ of the Workers’ League of America, Torres came to power when a right-wing army coup against President Ovando misfired and he found himself the ‘reluctant hero’ of the Bolivian masses and leader of a Bonapartist regime whose margin for manoeuvre was increasingly restricted by the rapidly escalating class struggle in town and countryside. In order to protect his regime from the army's conspiracies Torres moved warily to the left. In May he set up the ‘Peoples’ Assembly’ to act as a safety valve for the masses. This body, composed of 240 members, 60 per cent of whom were nominated by the trade unions and 40 per cent by other left-wing organ- izations, did not have any statutory powers. Its resolutions were not binding but it began to exercise a very important and growing influence on the social and political life of the people. The crunch finally came when the Assembly—despite resistance from Torres—demanded the setting up of a ‘People’s Army’ as a counterweight to the regular army. Before the Assembly could discuss this proposal at its next scheduled meeting, which was due to have been on September 7, the army, air force, Rangers and CIA struck. Hundreds of students and workers were killed and Torres took asylum in the Peruvian Embassy from whence he has now fled to Peru. The heroic working class of Bolivia has lost an important battle, but not the war against the reactionary capitalist class of. Bolivia and their imperialist backers. Despite the treachery of the Stalinists and revisionists the Bolivian workers will succeed in assimilat- August 30, 1971. THE RIGHT-WING militarists, with the support of the fascist Falangists and the old nation- alist leader Paz, have taken over in Bolivia ending the Torres regime and the Popular Assembly. No information has been forthcoming on the fate of revolutionaries in Bolivia, particularly the militants of the POR. Brutal as the old Barrientos military regime was, which took the life of Cesar Lora and other militants of the old Trotskyist movement as well as hunting down and murdering Guevara, this new fascist-supported mili- tary regime can be expected to carry through even more brutal murders of revolutionaries. It is necessary to make an assessment of how this coup was permitted to take place, what it reveals of the Popular Assembly, and the role particularly of those within it who claimed to be Trot- skyists. The construction of a Trotskyist movement in Latin America will depend on absorb- ing the bitter lessons of this latest bloody episode in the tumultuous history of Bolivia. There is no time to lose in drawing these lessons. What has happened in Bolivia can be fol- lowed shortly in Peru, in Chile and even in Argentina. The crisis of capitalism is so intense and the working-class movement in Latin America so determined that the crisis of leadership is posed with acute sharpness. In every country of Latin America it can Bolivia: bitter lessons be said that capitalism rules only because of the paralysis and con- fusion of those elements which call themselves Trotskyists. This is the bitter lesson of Bolivia. Nothing, absolutely nothing can Xe constructed in Latin America unless this lesson is learned. Strongest Outside of Ceylon, Bolivia has had the strongest Trotskyist movement of any colonial coun- try in the world. Trotskyism has been a major factor among Bolivian tin miners for a decade and a half now. The key figure of Bolivian Trotskyism has been Guillermo Lora. Lora, who lost his own brother under Barrientos and whose whereabouts at this moment is not known, must share a responsibility in the recent rightist coup. Lora, in collaboration with the Bolivian Stalinists and with the agreement of the Bolivian and international Pabloites, failed to fight at any point for the over- throw of the Torres military regime. Thus he, along with the rest of the Popular Assembly, acted as a left -over for Torres while the right wing elements in Torres’ own army prepared and finally executed their coup. In so doing Lora was carrying forward a political course begun over a decade ago, from which he has consistently refused to veer. At every point this course has received support within the Fourth International or forces claiming to represent the Fourth International. Though less known ing the lessons of August and build a mass revolutionary leadership on Trotskyist foundations. than the evolution of the LSSP (Lanka Sama Samaja Party) in Ceylon, the role of Lora and the POR has been no less treacherous and important. In 1952 Paz, the leader of the bourgeois MNR, a party much like the Bandaranaike SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) of Ceylon, took over the government while the armed miners took over the mining areas creating the elements of a dual power situa- tion. Under these conditions Lora and the POR called for Lechin and the COB (Bolivian trade union movement) to be ad- mitted into the Paz bourgeois government and gave this govern- ment critical support. Instead of fighting to break the trade unions from the bourgeois nationalist government Lora fought for them to enter the government. Instead of calling for the overthrow of this government and its replace- ment by a workers’ government, Lora called for critical support for this government. This position received the full support of Michel Pablo, Mandel and other leaders of the Fourth International in that period. They wrote in their magazine: Ride back ‘The POR began by justifiably granting critical support to the MNR government. That is, it desisted from issuing the slogan “down with the government”: it gave the government critical sup- port against attacks of imperial- ism and reaction, and it sup- ported all progressive measures.’ It should be noted that we are here speaking of support to Paz who today seeks to ride back into power along with the fascist Falange, the right-wing generals and the CIA! In this period the Fourth International was wracked by a fundamental split centering on Pablo’s attempt to completely liquidate Trotskyism into Stalin- ism and the social democratic parties. Under these conditions it was not really possible for the Bolivian question to be seriously discussed, much less fought out. It must, however, be noted that Lora contributed his share to deepening this crisis by throwing his weight behind Pablo. Like many in the LSSP, Lora had areas of agreement with the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and the others in the International Com- mittee. But he did not proceed from questions of international concern and perspectives. The easiest course was to go along with Pablo. This he did. This way the Latin American sections of the Fourth International were thrown behind Pablo who sub- sequently, through his collabora- tor Posadas, was to do his best to break up and liquidate these forces. At the time of the reunification of the SWP-supported forces with Mandel in 1963, Lora was independent of either the Inter- national Committee or the United Secretariat. The United Secre- tariat’s group in Bolivia was headed by Moscoso. Soon there- after Lora fused with Moscoso entering the United Secretariat

[p023] Bolivia: Bitter lessons of defeat By TIM WOHLFORTH: Reprinted from the ‘Bulletin’, weekly organ of the Workers’ League of America, August 30, 1971. THE RIGHT-WING militarists, with the support of the fascist Falangists and the old nation- alist leader Paz, have taken over in Bolivia ending the Torres regime and the Popular Assembly. No information has been forthcoming on the fate of revolutionaries in Bolivia, particularly the militants of the POR. Brutal as the old Barrientos military regime was, which took the life of Cesar Lora and other militants of the old Trotskyist movement as well as hunting down and murdering Guevara, this new fascist-supported mili- tary regime can be expected to carry through even more brutal murders of revolutionaries. It is necessary to make an assessment of how this coup was permitted to take place, what it reveals of the Popular Assembly, and the role particularly of those within it who claimed to be Trot- skyists. The construction of a Trotskyist movement in Latin America will depend on absorb- ing the bitter lessons of this latest bloody episode in the tumultuous history of Bolivia. There is no time to lose in drawing these lessons. What has happened in Bolivia can be fol- lowed shortly in Peru, in Chile and even in Argentina. The crisis of capitalism is so intense and the working-class movement in Latin America so determined that the crisis of leadership is posed with acute sharpness. In every country of Latin America it can Bolivia: bitter lessons be said that capitalism rules only because of the paralysis and con- fusion of those elements which call themselves Trotskyists. This is the bitter lesson of Bolivia. Nothing, absolutely nothing can Ne constructed in Latin America unless this lesson is learned. Strongest Outside of Ceylon, Bolivia has had the _ strongest Trotskyist movement of any colonial coun- try in the world. Trotskyism has been a major factor among Bolivian tin miners for a decade and a half now. The key figure of Bolivian Trotskyism has been Guillermo Lora. Lora, who lost his own brother under Barrientos and whose whereabouts at this moment is not known, must share a responsibility in the recent rightist coup. Lora, in collaboration with the Bolivian Stalinists and with the agreement of the Bolivian and international Pabloites, failed to fight at any point for the over- throw of the Torres military regime. Thus he, along with the rest of the Popular Assembly, acted as a left -over for Torres while the right wing elements in Torres’ own army prepared and finally executed their coup. In so doing Lora was carrying forward a political course begun over a decade ago, from which he has consistently refused to veer. At every point this course has received support within the Fourth International or forces claiming to represent the Fourth International. Though less known On the weekend of August 21-22 the ten-month-old regime of General Juan José Torres was overthrown by a ClA-backed coup led by Colonel Banzer—head of the military academy. Banzer had the close support of the bourgeois MNR—National Revolutionary Movement—and the Bolivian Socialist Falange— an extreme right-wing semi-fascist movement. Torres came to power when a right-wing army coup against President Ovando misfired and he found himself the “reluctant hero’ of the Bolivian masses and leader of a Bonapartist regime whose margin for manoeuvre was increasingly restricted by the rapidly escalating class struggle in town and countryside. In order to protect his regime from the army's conspiracies Torres moved warily to the left. In May he set up the ‘Peoples’ Assembly’ to act as a safety valve for the masses. This body, composed of 240 members, 60 per cent of whom were nominated by the trade unions and 40 per cent by other left-wing organ- izations, did not have any statutory powers. Its resolutions were not binding but it began to exercise a very important and growing influence on the social and political life of the people. The crunch finally came when the Assembly—despite resistance from Torres—demanded the setting up of a ‘People’s: Army’ as a counterweight to the regular army. Before the Assembly could discuss this proposal at its next scheduled meeting, which was due to have been on September 7, the army, air force, Rangers and CIA struck. Hundreds of students and workers were killed and Torres took asylum in the Peruvian Embassy from whence he has now fled to Peru. The heroic working class of Bolivia has lost an important battle, but not the war against the reactionary capitalist class of. Bolivia and their imperialist backers. Despite the treachery of the Stalinists and revisionists the Bolivian workers will succeed in assimilat- ing the lessons of August and build a mass revolutionary leadership on Trotskyist foundations. . than the evolution of the LSSP (Lanka Sama Samaja Party) in Ceylon, the role of Lora and the POR has been no less treacherous and important. In 1952 Paz, the leader of the bourgeois MNR, a party much like the Bandaranaike SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) of Ceylon, took over the government while the armed miners took over the mining areas creating the elements of a dual power situa- tion. Under these conditions Lora and the POR called for Lechin and the COB (Bolivian trade union movement) to be ad- mitted into the Paz bourgeois government and gave this govern- ment critical support. Instead of fighting to break the trade unions from the bourgeois nationalist government Lora fought for them to enter the government. Instead of calling for the overthrow of this government and its replace- ment by a workers’ government, Lora called for critical support for this government. This position received the full support of Michel Pablo, Mandel and other leaders of the Fourth International in that period. They wrote in their magazine: Ride back ‘The POR began by justifiably granting critical support to the MNR_ government. That is, it desisted from issuing the slogan “down with the government”: it gave the government critical sup- port against attacks of imperial- ism and reaction, and it sup- ported all progressive measures.’ , It should be noted that we are here speaking of support to Paz who today seeks to ride back into power along with the fascist Falange, the right-wing generals and the CIA! In this period the Fourth International was wracked by a fundamental split centering on Pablo’s attempt to completely liquidate Trotskyism into Stalin- ism and the social democratic parties. Under these conditions it was not really possible for the Bolivian question to be seriously discussed, much less fought out. It must, however, be noted that Lora contributed his share to deepening this crisis by throwing his weight behind Pablo. Like many in the LSSP, Lora had areas of agreement with the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and the others in the International Com- mittee. But he did not proceed: from questions of international concern and perspectives. The easiest course was to go along with Pablo. This he did. This way the Latin American sections of the Fourth International were thrown behind Pablo who sub- sequently, through his collabora- tor Posadas, was to do his best to break up and liquidate these forces. At the time of the reunification of the SWP-supported forces with Mandel in 1963, Lora was independent of either the Inter- national Committee or the United Secretariat. The United Secre- tariat’s group in Bolivia was headed by Moscoso. Soon there- after Lora fused with Moscoso entering the United Secretariat

[p024] and lending to the United Secre- tariat his support. The fusion took place on what appeared to be common agreement over Cuba and Castro. Subordinate The unification was not to last long as Moscoso sought to imple- ment this agreement by sub- ordinating the POR to guerrilla activities in the countryside. Lora insisted on an orientation based on the tin miners and other sec- tions of the Bolivian working class and a split ensued. Following this split Lora estab- lished contact with the Inter- national Committee announcing his agreement with the IC’s inter- national perspectives, especially its position on the centrality of the struggles of the working class in all countries. But Lora never made any serious attempt to assess his own history and on this basis make a _ fundamental development towards a break with his own past. With the rise of Torres and the Popular Assembly the old posi- tions of Lora re-emerge. Once again the country is faced with a dual-power situation and the pos- sibility of civil war. Once again Lora refuses to face up to it, to pose the necessity to break with Torres, to form a workers’ and farmers’ government, to fight it out directly with all sections of the military and capitalism. Instead he combines with the Communist Party around a COB resolution which states: ‘The present process is con- tradictory: while the government is taking certain anti-imperialist and progressive measures on the one hand, on the other hand it is adopting pro-imperialist measures contrary to the national and popular interests. The proletariat supports whatever is positive for the emancipation of our people and at the same time criticizes and fights the measures which are against the masses’ interests, fighting to impose new anti- imperialist measures which will lead us to a true revolution on the road of national emancipation and socialism. This is our tactic in the present process, and this is without forgetting the final ‘goals of the working class.’ This section of the resolution, we understand, was written by ‘the Stalinists, but the POR voted -for the document as a whole janyway. In any event their posi- tion was not qualitatively ldifferent from that of the Stalinists. Together with the \Stalinists the POR supported the position of threatening a General Strike and military action in defence of Torres! ' The Pabloites, including Man- del and the SWP, must assume their responsibility in this situa- tion. First of all it was the SWP which developed the theory of coming to power with ‘blunted instruments’ in Latin America, 70 encouraging liquidationist and anti-theory tendencies throughout the region. In a period when what was needed was a sharp theo- retical struggle to develop a leadership for the coming class movement, the SWP encouraged adventurism and guerrillaism and all sorts of unprincipled com- binations with Castroites, Maoists and Stalinists. In 1969 Bolivia was a central feature of the struggle within the United Secretariat. The majority around Mandel-Frank-Maitan, which supported a strategy of guerrilla warfare, held up Bolivia as the one country in the world and Moscoso as the man for the job, where a breakthrough would be made through setting up guerrilla foci. The SWP opposed this but offered no real alternative to this perspective. Then one year later Bolivia does become a ‘focus’ but of proletarian not guerrilla war- fare. Mandel and Co quickly drop Bolivia shifting their atten- tion to Argentina. Such is the reaction of such elements to the movement of the working class! However, most important, the SWP lets them do this. It also dropped Bolivia from its polemics with Mandel and Maitan only to, Students trying to resuscitate a fellow student severely wounded by aircraft tire. He died later. Fourth International Winter 1971/72

[p025] in the recent period, start speak- ing of the Popular Assembly in the same uncritical terms as Lora. Clearly the movement of the working class in Bolivia upset the SWP as well. How could it pro- pose an orientation to the stu- dents on the basis of Bolivian developments where the question of working-class power, of socialist revolution itself was posed? It, too, had to do its best to see to it that the struggle in Bolivia did not go beyond the bounds of Torres. Gerry Foley, writing in the July 19, 1971 ‘Intercontinental Press’, expressed the complete approval of the SWP precisely of the relationship between the Popular Assembly and Torres. He writes: ‘Arming to defend the demo- cratic rights of the workers, the unions apparently gave critical support to the Torres regime— “support” that perfectly suits Lenin’s definition: “as the rope supports a hanged man”.’ And later on: ‘By and large, the programme of the Assamblea seemed con- fined to demanding that the Torres government carry out its promises to the working people of the country. The measures it recommended flowed clearly and logically from this position.’ Is it necessary to point out that Lenin was referring to support to social democratic parties and not to bourgeois governments and certainly not to military dictators? Fundamental The potential for building the Trotskyist movement in Latin America is now extremely great. What is fundamental is that now the struggle of the colonial peoples coincides with the struggle of workers in the ad- vanced countries. This struggle now includes’ the powerful American working class as well as that of Europe—particularly following Nixon’s new economic policies. At the same time the dangers involved are as grave as the potential is bright. We cannot forget the terrible Bolivia: bitter lessons Workers’ and students’ militia In La Paz, the Bolivian capital, being rushed to the battie-front at the height of the battle. price the working-class youth of Ceylon have paid for revisionism in the form of the LSSP. In the ‘Sudan the CP’s support to an- other ‘progressive’ general has led to its massacre. We now fear for the very lives of the militants of the POR in a situation created by the refusal of the POR’s leadership to confront the central lessons of the historic develop- ment of the Marxist movement. It is not possible to build a revolutionary movement on any other basis than principle. To do otherwise in this period is to invite new defeats, new mas- sacres. To take up the principled struggle for Trotskyism based on all the lessons of the ‘struggle against revisionism can lead to the development of mass revolu- throw of tionary parties throughout Latin America, to the successful over- capitalism, of im- perialism. Never concerned Like the LSSP leadership, Lora never concerned himself with questions of the international movement, its theoretical battles, its difficulties. He felt that as long as he rooted himself in the working class and adhered to the theory of the permanent revolu- tion and Transitional Programme as he saw it he would be able to play a revolutionary role in Bolivia. ; But this perspective can only be developed on an international scale and through the struggle against its opposite, against the attempts of revisionism to destroy it. It is precisely through con- fronting all the difficulties of the movement — the isolation, the petty bourgeois pressure, the confusion, so much confusion— that theoretical development can take place. Without such develop- ment succumbing to the national bourgeoisie is inevitable. The lessons of Bolivia reinforce our conviction in what we wrote on the recent convention of the SWP. There is no proletarian orientation outside of the struggle to construct the Fourth Inter- national. The Fourth Inter- ‘national can only be constructed on the firm principled ground of a true and honest assessment of its own history. 71