The Bolivian Revolution and the Deviations of the POR

[p008] THE BOLIVIAN REVOLUTION AND THE DEVIATIONS Bolivia The victory of the counter-revolution has been established. ‘Law and order’ reigns in Boli- via. A victory or a defeat of the working class clearly has international Significance onthe rela- tion of forces in the Social, political, and eco- nomic spheres. Our criticism, translated and reprinted from the ille- gal theoretical organ of the Workers’ Vanguard of Greece ‘Proletario’, is of value only to the extent that it will assist comrades to understand the future process of historical development. And, more important, in so far as it influ- ences the perspectives of the building of the revolutionary party and the victory of the proletarian revolution in our country. As in our country, the tem- porary defeat of the Bolivian working class enables local and foreign reformists to acquire new bases. The immeasurable value of Marxism as a weapon of social and historical orientation is more than indispensable. It is a matter of life and dezth for all humanity. It demands a daily determined theoretical struggle for dialectical material- ism in philosophy and in methodology in all aspects of the class struggle, leading to the most urgent task of today —the building of the revolu- tionary Trotskyist Party of Greece. We have struggled and we shall continue to _— struggle against all ‘new’ roads to revo- lution, against the various ‘popular’ fronts with the fake anti-dictatorship bourgeoisie, 153

[p009] against those who castrate the class anti-dictatorial struggle with mere anti-dictator and anti-imperialist attitudes (‘first the junta must go and then we'll see’), We are opposed to the ene- mies of the construction of a Trotskyist youth movement and those who want the youth to have theories different from the party and worship ‘the spontaneous revolutionary con- sciousness’. And most of all we fight against those who reject the struggle for the Transitional Programme under the influence of the day-to-day struggle, based on the theory of Marxism as a weapon against the various bourgeois influences which are transmit- ted by the bureaucracy and the revisionists into the workers’ movement. The bitter lesson of Bolivia gives us the ccurage and the will to struggle against <ll betrayals, deviaticns and errors of our own Stalinists end cen- trists, In the final analysis, every error of estimation and _tac- tics is paid for dearly by our- selves, through arrests, tor- ture and incarceration in the medieval prisons of the hated capitalist military dictatorship. The critique that follows will, we believe, provoke discussion in the International Committee of the Fourth International] and, we hope, among the mem- bers and cadres of the POR and French Organisation Com- muniste_ Internationaliste. a The deviations of the POR The revolutionary develop- ments in Bolivia and the part played in them by the Trotsky- ists of the POR who found themselves in the front line of the class struggle have justi- fiably attracted the attention of the revolutionary vanguard. A discussion has _ been opened up in the ranks of the International Committee. We participate in this discussion convinced that the building of the Fourth International and its parties is not possible with- out a full discussion of, and an ideological struggle over, the great events which occur in the arena of international revolu- tion, First, we feel duty bound to pay homage to those of the working class and those Trot- skyists who fell on the battle- ground of the class struggle. 154 However, apart from _ this supreme duty, we must face up to the problems arising from the class struggle in Boli- via. On these our lines have divided. The Bolivian question was in fact the culmination of a long series of differences within the IC. The last straw! We find in the line of the POR deviations of the Pablo- ite type—particularly in their turning away from the Soviet experience of the October revolution, and on the ques- tion of a ‘new’ line, that of the ‘Popular Assembly’, The Bolivian problem has acquired an international sig- nificance also from the view- point put forward by the leaders of the French organi- zation of the IC—i.e. that a ‘Popular Assembly’ of a ‘Soviet type’ can become the instrument of the taking of power by the proletariat on a world scale. We firmly believe that this tendency is charac- terized by a deviation from Soviet principles. The question of Soviets today is the touch- stone for all those tendencies which, in the name of ‘realism’ and ‘modernized’ Marxism, in reality abandon’ the basic principles of the Soviet dic- tatorship of the proletariat. But what was the root cause of this deviation? The key lies in Lenin’s famous axiom, ‘Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement.’ The struggle for theory has been at the centre of our struggle against the Pabloites and the state capitalists. The struggle for an understanding of dialectic materialism as a theory of knowledge has been at the centre of the divisions in the IC. But once again those who fought for such an understanding have been vin- dicated. It is our contention that the explanation of the POR’s betrayal is found in their pragmatic adaptation to circumstances and their ne- glect and contempt for Marxist theory. The bourgeois, counter- revolutionary nature of the Torres dictatorship Torres masqueraded as a representative of the ‘left’. Assisted by the _ right-wing trade unionist Lechin, with his influence in the unions of the COB (Bolivian Workers’ Centre) he was able to create considerable illusions in the masses. Having suffered a_ long period of dictatorship, parti- cularly under General Bar- rientos, the rebellious masses were deceived by the fake- left phraseology of Torres and Lechin. Proceeding from deeper motives, they took over the streets from the first moment of the Torres coup. There is a precedent in the case of Castro. Starting from a bourgeois-democratic move- ment, he was forced to present himself demagogically to the workers and peasants as a ‘communist’ and to tolerate the growth of the workers’ movement. Castro’s example has inspired a whole series of military and political career- ists. The Pabloite theory of the genuine communism of Castro, and their hero-worship of the Algerian leadership, as well as that of other Bonapartist regimes such as Nasser, Nkrumah, etc., naturally rein- forced the illusions of the workers in the ‘leftism’ of various dictatorships in many colonial and semi-colonial countries. The release of Regis Debray, an associate of Che Guevara, was conceived as a smokescreen to delude the masses who were seeking their own freedom. In reality, Torres was flesh from the same body as the militarist leadership which held power on behalf of the financial oligarchy and Ameri- can imperialism. His only motive in opposing the rise of bourgeois political parties was to monopolize the crushing of the labour movement himself. Torres’ coup took place in a period of the sharpening of the cyclical crisis of capital- dsm. Major financial crises, the fall of the buying power of wages, the growth of un- employment to _ terrifying heignts and social upheavals are the order of the day. In order to face the criti- cal social conditions weighing down on the Bolivian masses: and to overcome the crisis at their expense, Torres com- bined demagogy with violence. He turned to his patrons, the Inter-American Bank and the World Bank and received $50m loans to finance the con- struction of an oil pipeline between Bolivia and Argen- tina in order to alleviate the serious unemployment prob- lem and forestall an uprising of the masses. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p010] The American CIA was as much behind the Torres coup as it is with all military pro- nunciamentos in Latin Ameri- ca. This did not prevent Torres demagogically adopt- ing a fake © anti-imperialist position. Barrientos did the same. So did-all manner of fake lefts, fake democrats, fake socialists, from Chiang Kai-shek, Castro, Ben Bella, Boumedienne, Nasser, Gaddafi, Bandaranaike, Aref and others, in order to divert the anti- imperialist feelings of the masses from the channel of socialism, with the aid of many kinds of opportunist organizations. However, all the tendencies of the ‘Popular Assembly’ organized an ‘anti-imperialist front’ without, apparently in- cluding Torres as one of their targets. Although US policy towards Torres was one of ambiguity and manoeuvres, certain circles in Washington were already beginning to accuse him of being ‘soft on communism’ and began to conspire with the gorilismo. What fright- ened them was the growth of the movement and of the Trotskyist factor. — The army leadership was not homogeneous. On the ex- treme right were the ‘gorilismo’, the pro-fascists, and rabid anti-communists. Others, more supple of move- ment, were at the centre, or, like Torres, swayed from one end to the other, but always within the framework of ‘the bourgeois regime. Torres, controlling only a small section of the military machine, and unable to face the conspiracies of the extreme right was ready to come to terms with it rather than permit the arming of the masses and the growth of class revolution. Thus, despite the ‘leftist’ mask, the nationalist, counter- revolutionary, dictatorial and capitalist nature of the Torres government was revealed for all to see. Torres also posed as a re- former. Indeed, he drew up and announced plans for the nationalization of the zinc, copper, lead and silver mines. Nationalization with compen- sation and without workers’ control is a motif of all oppor- tunist and Bonapartist govern- Bolivia ments. Even the Pabloites see a transition to socialism in the percentage of nationalization. But Torres did not dare go as far as to carry out this nationalization. He learned his lesson from the American reaction against Ovando when the Bolivian Gulf Oil Company was nationalized. The Inter- American Bank had already cut back Torres’ credits. On the other hand Lora’s Trotskyists were demanding the nationalization of the mines under workers’ control. Nationalization under workers’ control without compensation has a transitional meaning. It means passing through revolu- tion towards proletarian power, the supreme criterion of the social revolution. But Torres’ demagogic promises amounted to no more than a shameless fraud. The Trotskyists of the POR did make a distinction of the class antithesis to Torres. They announced that ‘The Torres government is not a workers’ government’, but in saying this they should have charac- terized it categorically as capitalist, dictatorial and counter-revolutionary. It was as though they were trying to iron out the class contradictions, to avoid the necessity of an uncompromis- ing struggle for the overthrow of Torres; as though they were debating the possibility of that government being a workers’ government. After the _ failure of Miranda’s coup against Torres, a demonstration was organ- ized with pressure from the POR Trotskyists. Their paper, “Massas’, advanced these slogans: ‘Socialism, not bourgeois reformism’, ‘Yes to the workers’ and _ peasants’ government’, ‘No to the popu- lar fronts of compromisers and traitors’. From this list the most con- crete slogan was missing, i.e. ‘Down with the Torres govern- ment’. How is this explained? Perhaps as the leit motiv of opportunism, striking only against the right, whilst sup- porting ‘democracy’? How was it that the masses were not concretely orientated to the overthrow of the government? If the regime was one of bourgeois reformism, why this boosting of Torres? At the time of the General Strike at the end of 1970 to have demanded the fall of the government was a necessity. When, in August 1971, the balance of forces had changed against Torres in favour of the workers’ movement, whilst the danger of a right-wing coup was acute, the slogan against the coup and_ the falangists should have been raised without blunting the sword against Torres. It is typical of the Stalinists, and especially the Pabloites, to have a general strategy ‘against fascism’, at the same time un- critically tail-ending so-called Jacobin leaderships like those of Cuba and Algeria. In his article in the Workers Press, Lora informed us: ‘At that time everybody thought—including we Marx- ists—that the arms would be given by the governing mili- tary team...’ Here we have revealed some extraordinary illusions in the nature of the bourgeois government of Torres, even in the Lora tendency. This re- vision of the real nature of Bonapartist governments is characteristic of Stalinism and Pabloism. It proved disastrous in the development of the revolution in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Wit- ness the role of the so-called ‘Trotskyists’ in Ceylon, or the ‘co-existence’ of the Maoists in Indonesia. ‘This position,’ added Lora, as a sort of self- criticism, ‘was completely mistaken.’ Recognition of this errone- ous estimation of the Torres regime would have been valuable but ‘La Verité [the OCI magazine] informed us that Lora, during the COB conference, not only made ‘certain concessions to social- ism in Bolivia alone’, but formed a front with the Stalin- ists with ‘a Stalinist-type view of the Ovando regime’. Ovando was a supporter of the junta who distinguished himself in the operations against Guevara. When he took power he posed as a re- former and a left-winger, his heart set on ‘the liberation’ of his country from ‘foreign imperialism’. He permitted the repatriation of Lechin, who had been exiled by Barrientos, and, even more daring than Torres, he nationalized the Gulf Oil Company. But his counter-revolutionary role be- came clear when he began his attacks on the left. The movement was rising fast under the pressures of the 155

[p011] general crisis of capitalism. At this time, Torres was too weak to crush it. This task was undertaken by the junta of CIA-trained officers led by Banzer, tolerated by Torres, and assisted by the errors of the POR. It was not simply a mistake to have expected such a government of the bourgeoisie to have armed the masses. The repetition of this error by Lora, and his entrist tactic in the ‘Esterouro’ movement, in- spired by Pablo, proved to be a profound aberration. Ever since 1848, when the ‘democrats’ dissolved the workshops and drowned the Parisian workers in_ blood, historical experience has pointed to the same conclus- ion. The case of the com- munists of Thiers (1871); the massacre of 30,000 workers by Chiang Kai-shek in the Canton rising of 1927 and his subse- quent crimes: Papandreou’s record in December 1944; Suharto’s role in the Indo- nesian massacres; the history of Arab leaders like Aref, Nasser, Sadat, Hussein; all the Bona- partist regimes in Latin America and around the world; all these experiences have proved that the most ‘left’, the most ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie considers as_ jts primary duty the disarmament and strangulation of the masses entering into revolu- tionary struggle. The deviation towards the Popular Assembly ‘Information Ouvriéres’, the OCI paper, informs us that after Miranda’s unsuccessful coup and the _ significant demonstrations successfully instigated by the POR in Jan- uary 1970, the Lora tendency was ‘the only one’ which put forward the slogan for the ‘Popular Assembly’ as a ‘lever to accelerate the struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ gov- ernment’, a line fully approved by ‘Information Ouvriéres’. Why? ‘In order to channel revolutionary action to this end through a concrete organ.’ But how? And why did the POR not think of channelling the revolutionary flood towards the concrete historical organ of Soviets? The revolutions of 1905 and 1917 showed us that the only road to the workers’ and peasants’ government is the road that passes through the soviets. 156 Bolshevik tactics are not opposed to the slogan for a constituent assembly. With this democratic demand we may seek a rostrum from which to explain our programme for real structural changes in the regime, for the conquest of wider democratic liberties, and for the overthrow of capital- ism. In parallel, we seek to destroy the illusions held by the masses in the constituent assembly, and about parliamen- tarism generally. But the slogan for’ the assembly for Bolsheviks, con- nected with our central slogan for a soviet system which expresses not only a_ higher form of the tactic of the United Front, is also a sure instrument, concrete, and his- torically justified, for the con- quest of power, for a workers’ and peasants’ government; and after the conquest of power it is the best and most demo- cratic system for the construc- tion of the workers’ state. The theses outlined by Lenin on the question of the con- stituent assembly state clearly: ‘2. In formulating the demand for the convention of the Constituent Assembly, the revolutionary social-democracy, right from the start of the 1917 Revolution emphasized repeatedly that the _ soviet democracy is a higher form of democracy than the usual bourgeois “democracy” with a Constituent Assembly. ‘3. For the transition from the bourgeois to the socialist regime, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, the democracy of the soviets of workers’ soliders’ and peasants’ deputies is not only a superior form of democratic institution (com- pared with the usual bourgeois democracy crowned with a Constituent Assembly) but also a unique form, able to secure the most painless transition to socialism.’ The Trotskyists could have posed the slogan of the con- stituent assembly, demanding democratic rights and exposing in this way the falsehood of the Torres regime. Torres, like most dictators, made endless promises of election and the restoration of ‘democracy’, but he had no intention of rein- stating the legislative bodies which the previous dictator, Ovando, had abolished. Indeed, he refused to convene the Popular Assembly. Even these psuedo-demo- cratic institutions of the bour- geoisie are irreconcilable with the dictatorship. In the end, it was forced to accept its con- vention for demagogic reasons, at a time when it was power- less to crush the movement in any other way. In the end Torres was forced to accept its conven- tion for demagogic reasons at a time when he was unable to resist the pressure of the masses. However, when he was convinced that Lechin’s party would dominate the Assembly, he accepted it as an advisory body. He was quite willing to accept the muted criticism of the type of the April 21 regime of the Greek colonels. ‘Let them make speeches to let off steam’, he was advised by his ministers. But he wanted the Assembly to be no more than a forerunner of the legis- lative body that would be elected after the drawing up of a constitution. Similarly in Greece, Papadopoulos created the ‘small parliament’, a harm- less advisory body where 3,000 appointed people vote on behalf of 9 million—a _ cor- porate body cast in the mould of the fascist state of Musso- lini or Franco. Thus the POR, together with all the other parties of betrayal, played a _ leading role in the setting up of the Assembly which was to be designated ‘Popular’, a name indistinguishable from the dog- mata of ‘People’s Power’, but something which has nothing in common with the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers. The opening of the Assembly was postponed for a few days in order to give Torrest a little more time to cover himself by whitewashing this dirty build- ing, This incident was typical of the relationship between the Popular Assembly and _ the government. Indeed the party of Lechin consistently defended the advisory character of the Pop- ular Assembly and the support of the government. The same tactic was pursued by the pro- Moscow Stalinists, though Moscow itself did not find the Popular Assembly to its liking, and openly supported, as it does elsewhere, the Bonapart- ist regime as it was. The Mao- ists followed the same line, and by voting Lechin as pre- sident of the Popular Assem- bly, demonstrated their real Fourth International Summer 1972 .

[p012] treacherous co-existentialist nature. The POR, perhaps without realizing it, in fighting for the Sovietization of the Popular Assembly, entered the slippery road of opportunism, in the service of the institution of ‘People’s Power’. Soviets and Constituent Assembly However the comrades of the POR omitted their basic duty, to put forward the slogan of soviets, to work for the coun- try-wide extension of the com- mittees, which to their credit, only they had built in the mines, and to crown this embryonic Soviet organization with a Congress of the com- mittees on a national scale, and finally, to work out a soviet constitution. Instead of directing the masses onto the road of 1905 and 1917, they pointed to 1879. ‘The relationship between bourgeois and__ proletarian democracy’, as Lenin wrote, attacking Kautsky’s support for the Constituent Assembly against the soviets, was in Bolivia placed on a basis of debasing the concept of soviets. Consciously or uncon- sciously there was a renega- tion from our basic principle that ‘soviet democracy is gen- erally a superior democratic form to the Constituent Assembly’ (Lenin) and a dif- ferent class basis. The leaders of the POR, and also the leaders of the French section, did not attempt to analyse the profound differ- ences, not only between soviets and a Constituent Assembly, but also between soviets and this ‘Popular Assembly of a soviet type’. Soviets are organs of the revolutionary proletariat, waging a life-or-death struggle against capitalism for the tri- umphant victory of the prole- tarian revolution, for power of the type of the commune. Before he became a rene- gade and a defender of con- stituent power against soviet power, synonymous with prole- tarian dictatorship, Kautsky once wrote this: ‘Today, the organization of soviets has behind it a great and glorious history. And it has in front of it an even greater one—and not only in. powers at the disposal of finance capital, from the eco- nomic and political points of view, the previous methods of economic and political struggle are inadequate, We cannot ignore them. They remain indispensable during calm times. From time to time, how- ever, there appear before us such tasks as do not corre- spond to these, the success of which can be guaranteed only by the joining of the economic and political means of power by the working class.’ But Kautsky renegued. Like the Mensheviks in 1905, he rejected the soviets as the instrument of seizing power and of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In opposition to the Mensheviks and opportun- ists of his time, Lenin pro- claimed the soviets to be the basic organs for the taking of power and maintaining it after triumph of the revolution. The Stalinists, after Ther- midor, demolished the soviet structure of the USSR, and propounded the idea that in the capitalist countries the soviets could not and should not be created before the 12th hour of the uprising. By thus disorientating it from the dic- tatorship of the proletariat, they destroyed the Chinese Revolution. The Maoists, with the guer- rilla nature of their new (northward) movement, not only failed to establish soviets throughout China, as Trotsky observed, but threw the soviet theory out of their ideological arsenal after they had taken power. The Pabloites passed on to the worship of ‘new types of revolution’, to the Cuban, Algerian, etc. ‘roads to social- ism’, which bear no relation to any of the principles of the Permanent Revolution or sovietism. Now, as a continuation of Pablo’s Chilean parliamentary road to socialism, there appears before us the vision of the Bolivian ‘soviet-type’ parlia- mentary road to socialism! The POR has turned its back on the soviets with the deceitful concept of the ‘Popu- lar Assembly’ which was to be of ‘a soviet type’. The com- rades of the POR inform us that the Popular Assembly was convened by the political nucleus which developed guidance of the General Strike. A General Strike committee, with factory committees and ‘committees of struggle’ formed around it, can play the role of council-soviets. With their clear class nature, Trotsky saw in these committees a form of soviet. But he always stressed that these committees should be, had to be, committees of revolutionary struggle. At the foundation of the Communist International in 1919, Lenin wrote that the soviet form was an _ interna- tional conquest after the crea- tion of soviets in Germany and the committees of mass proletarian struggle in England (the shop stewards’ commit- tees). He proclaimed: ‘The soviets are victorious around the world. They have won the sympathy of the workers.’ What happened in Bolivia? The General Strike committee could have created throughout the country a wide network of strike committees. These should have taken up _ the democratic and economic demands of the masses, oppos- ing the conspiracies of the right wing and the Torres dic- tatorship, orientating them towards the conquest of power by the workers and peasants. In preference to this soviet road, the Bolivian Trotskyists attempted to sovietize the Popular Assembly, and thus entered in essence a ‘new road to revolution’, The Pabloites claimed to have discovered a ‘new type of revolution’, led by rebelli- ous peasantry and a ‘Jacobin’ leadership ‘which is unlike the others’. They boasted that they . had enriched the theory of Permanent Revolution; in fact they had shamelessly distorted it. Similarly the leaders of the POR and of ‘Information Ouvriéres’-OCI claim the dis- covery of a new organ for the conquest of power, the ‘Popu- lar Assembly of a soviet type’. Why this distortion of the soviet theory? Why were they drawn to the _ parliament- assembly? Why, instead of building soviets, did they try to frame a constitution, with which ‘the Popular Assembly would deepen its roots in the Committees’? Why the attempt to create a new, Bolivian-type of revo- lution, in place of the proven October? The Lechin tendency, towards the end of 1970 as an organ of leadership and Russia. Everywhere it is proven that faced with the gigantic the Stalinists and the ‘Catholic Revolutionaries’ dressed up the Bolivia 157

[p013] Torres regime with the cloak of parliamentarism. But what of the POR? Dual power ‘sui generis’ The most serious problem of a revolutionary situation aris- ing in any country is the problem oof power. The question of strategy and tactics for the conquest of power is of equivalent importance as that of the organ which will achieve it. Any deviation from this can prove fatal. Nothing could be more erroneous than the view that the Popular Assembly repre- sented a duality of power. We believe that the Popular Assembly in Bolivia was an impediment to the movement which objectively had developed to a situation of dynamic dualism, preventing it from taking the road of the creation of soviets and thus the development of a dual power. ‘Of what does dual power consist? In that, side by side with the provisional govern- ment of the bourgeoisie, there is formed another government which, yet weak and embry- onic, indisputably exists in practice and is developing: the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies.’ (Lenin, ‘On Dual Power’—April 22 (9), 1917.) Lenin is quite clear, quite definite, on the soviets as the only expression of dual power. He continues: ‘This power is not at all of the same type as exists in parliamentary bourgeois democracy.’ It is not the same thing as an assembly- parliament of ‘dual type’, em- bellished with a few com- mittees of miners. From the point of view of class essence and democracy no Popular Assembly can be compared with genuine soviets at the factories, the places of work, the neighbourhoods, the villages and the © barracks, organized in a local, district, national and governmental structure, with elected and recallable_ representatives throughout. The soviets are real class organs, not plastic substitutes. Dual power means that the soviet and bourgeois powers are engaged in a struggle. The victory of the soviets estab- lishes a new kind of state, the commune, i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat. The POR correctly estab- 138 lished committees in the mines, If these had been spread throughout the country the possibility of victory would have been _ incomparably greater. But subordinated to the Popular Assembly, the committees faltered away from their natural tendency towards soviet power. The creation of the Popular Assembly was not ‘a consider- able victory for the workers’, as the leaders of the POR and the OCI’s ‘Information Ouvrierés’ claim, together with ‘the Pabloites. On the contrary, it was a liquidation and a castration of the committees. It was a passing over to the side of parliamentary methodo- logy, conciliation and com- promise with the bourgeois regime of Torres. The Pabloite opportunism of Pierre Frank and_ Ernest Mandel during the May-June events in France in 1968 pro- vided us with another example of the distortion of the duality of power. With their Men- shevik over-estimation of the role of the students and intellectuals, and an_anti- Marxist underestimation of the role of the proletariat (take- overs of factories, committees, strikes of workers and peasants), they considered the epicentre of the revolution and of dual power to be... in the Sorbonne! It was not the proletariat but the students who were the bearers of revolution. Yet another road to socialism! It would have been strange if the Pabloites, with their knack of discovering roads to socialism in the most unlikely places, had not adopted the views of the POR on the Popu- lar Assembly as ‘an organ of soviet character’, as an ‘indis- putable lever’, as an organ ‘of workers’, which ‘pointed the way to a- workers’ and peasants’ government’. Support for Torres The POR did not support Torres. The Pabloite Toussain tried to slander the POR on this question. The associates of Pablo, Frank, Mandel and Alain Krivine who have sup- ported the regimes of Ben Bella, Castro, Nasser, Makarios and all the Bonapartes of the under-developed countries, ought not to discuss questions which really incriminate them, The POR line is crystal clear. ‘It would be extremely dangerous to say that there is a similarity of aim between the masses and the group of im- perialists which formed itself around Torres because it was obvious from the start that they were both fighting for different ends.’ Lechin and the Stalinists naturally supported the ‘pro- gressive’ dictator Torres, and not only against the conspiracy of the right-wing junta. This subordination to the bourgeois ‘democratic’ left is in the nature of opportunism. From the time of Varsky’s sup- port for Pilsudsky in Poland, in whom he saw the ‘demo- cratic dictatorship of workers and peasants’, and of the sup- port for the dictator Pangalos in Greece on whom the Greek CP called to ‘do as you boast, my general’ in 1925, the con- tinuity of support for Bona- partist regimes in the colonial and semi-colonial countries is a result of the fellow travelling of the Stalinists with the ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie (as in China, Spain, Indonesia, etc). It is no accident that Moscow’ always supported Torres, and that Soviet missions always operated in Bolivia. We cannot achieve power without a merciless fight against the opportunists, It is sufficient to remind ourselves of the struggle against the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries inside the Russian Soviets. But in the Popular Assembly we had a conciliation of the POR with the Lechin tendency and the Stalinists, and a cer- tain United Front with the Stalinists, If this was not so, how was it that ‘the proposals and docu- ments presented by the POR to be used as a basis for the work of the Assembly were adopted with few changes and mostly unanimously’? And how was it possible for a POR comrade to be elected unanimously as military com- mander of the Popular Assembly? (Comrade Sossa’s interview in ‘Information Ouvriéres’.) Communists must make a clear distinction between a ‘democratic’ and a fascist government, At a_— given moment it is necessary to con- centrate their fire against the direct intervention of open counter-revolution—but not to support Torres in the way the Fourth International Summer 1972

[p014] Stalinists and Lechin did. It is not permissible to relax the struggle against the govern- ment and its lackeys inside the Popular Assembly. ee The United Front with the Stalinists On what basis was the front with the Stalinists made? ‘We fought’, says Lora, ‘on the lines of the united anti-imperialist front and against the banning of some tendencies from the Popular Assembly’. It seems that Lora has learnt nothing from the ‘anti- imperialism’ of all opportunists from which the anti-capitalist content is removed, and which is used to blunt their swords against their ‘own’ bourgeoisie. Analysis of the experiences of national liberation struggles has taught us that the bour- geoisie of a colonial or semi- colonial country cannot be more progressive and revolu- tionary than that of a non- colonial country. The Pabloites gave their support to the ‘anti-imperialist’ petty bourgeois and bourgeois leaderships. How could the POR form a United Front in such a sham ‘anti-imperialist’ struggle? The ruthless exploitation of the Bolivian masses by US imperialism and local finance capital aroused such deep hatred that the local and foreign bourgeoisie needed to base itself on the bayonets of Barrientos, Ovando and Torres dictatorships against the up- risings of the masses. These anti-imperialist feel- ings of the masses are pro- gressive and revolutionary. We depend on them for the triumph of the Permanent Revolution. But the ‘anti-imperialism’ of the opportunists is counter- revolutionary. It is steeped in the spirit of collaboration with the local bourgeoisie, It is not accidental that both the Bolivian and the Moscow Stalinists supported Torres, who from the start was an agent of US imperialism. The Stalinists inserted in the programme of the unions the view that the Bolivian revolu- tion would have a bourgeois character, This meant that the unresolved problems of democ- racy, agrarian economy and anti-imperialism would be solved by another revolution, which would not be proletarian Bolivia Hence their Menshevik support for Torres. What then would be the strategy of the ‘United anti- imperialist front’ of the CP and the POR? Would it be bourgeois - democratic? Or would it be proletarian, solving on the way the problems of the bourgeois-democracy? The ‘united anti-imperialist front’ could not raise the question of national liberation since Bolivia is not a colonial country occupied by imperial- ism, However, according to the theory of the Permanent Revolution, even where there exists a problem of national liberation, the bearer of the democratic revolution is the proletariat which inscribes the tasks of the bourgeois-demo- cracy on the banner of the proletarian revolution, and carries out the struggle against imperialism while fighting at the same time the local bourgeoisie and landlords. For us, the anti-imperialist struggle is linked to the historical task of world revolution in general and the local one in particular, and a front with opportunists on the basis of an illegitimate ‘anti- imperialism’ is inconceivable. The underlying meaning of the treacherous fake anti- imperialism of the Stalinists shown by the fact that when Rockefeller visited Latin America during a period of revolutionary situations and intense strike activity, the opportunitists turned the movement towards anti- Americanism, thus disorientat- ing the masses from the con- quest of power. We would certainly form a tactical common front with the Stalinists against Banzer, Torres, and the whole junta— behind which stand the Penta- gon and the CIA—but on the basis of class demands, through concrete class organs and method of struggle, with the emphasis on the committee- soviets. Such a front should differen- tiate its responsibilities from the methods of _ individual terror and bombings, which have been in complete opposi- tion to the mass movement ever since the time of ‘Iskra’ at the beginning of the cen- tury. The Stalinists would have done everything in their power to drag the ‘united anti- imperialist front’ towards guer- rilla warfare in the mountains or the cities, and to turn the movement into a petty- bour- geois one, leaning on_ the peasantry and pushing the proletariat aside. (It was their love of guerrilla warfare which made the Pabloites betray the Permanent Revolution.) But we saw none of these important, concrete questions in the history of the United Front of the Stalinists and the Lora tendency (as we were told by ‘Informations Ouvriéres’). Lechin’s assembly at the service of Torres The Popular Assembly placed itself under the leadership of Lechin at its June session. It suited Lechin perfectly, and he placed the Assembly at the service of Torres. There should be no con- fusion between the Popular Assembly and soviets. Soviets grow out of strike committees; they are organs of struggle. The soviets could fall, or they could be victorious and be- come organs of state of the commune type. Had the Popular Assembly won it would have become a bourgeois parliament of a hid- den dictatorship, like all the rest of them. And, of course, it would have trampled over the corpses of the miners. The ten days of the Popular Assembly decided its fate. Sossa warned of the dangers of ‘coming to terms with Torres and becoming what Lechin and the pro-Moscow Stalinists wanted—i.e. an in- stitution assimilated into the other bourgeois institutions and being used by Torres as a bourgeois parliament an organ of class-collaboration, and subjecting of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie’. This pros- pect alone is enough to smash the myth of Assembly-parlia- ments of a ‘soviet type’. In_ reality, by its very nature, the Popular Assembly could not have been trans- formed into a soviet body, despite the frantic efforts of Lora who was trying to ‘sink its roots into’ the local assemblies and committees existing at the places of work’. At the best, the Popular Assembly could have brought about a government of Lechin and Torres, or of Lechin and the Stalinists—a government of pseudo-reform and counter- revolution. 159

[p015] What did Lechin represent? A right-wing reformist trade union tendency which, since his becoming a minister in the Estenssoro government became organically linked to the bourgeoisie. The representatives of this tendency at the Popular Assembly were appointed by the trade union bureaucracy, or came from Assemblies dominated by the bureaucracy. (From the Greece of the April 21 coup we know what such Assemblies mean.) Estenssoro, aided by the Stalinists and by Lechin, (1952-1964) cracked down on the labour movement in a period of revolutionary up- surge. His counter-revolu- tionary policies paved the way for the Barrientos dictatorship. He imposed state control of the mines—which accounted for 80 per cent of the budget income and two thirds of all exports —- and which had passed into the control of the workers. He _ attacked the Trotskyists, who were strug- gling in the vanguard of the unions, and the armed rallies of workers, particularly ‘miners, as well as in the van- guard of armed demonstra- tions of peasants. At that time the peasants had occupied 4 million hec- tares of land, which eventually were distributed to 133,000 families. This was Lechin’s role—a prop for bourgeois ‘democracy’ and dictatorship. Lechin won the chairman- ship of the Popular Assembly against the joint non-partisan candidate of the POR and the CP. (On what programme did this non-partisan candidate stand?) The POR leaders believed that they were a ‘minority only on the organizational plane’. while their positions ‘found widespread echoes’ (Sossa) in the opportunist mob of the Popular Assembly. The influ- ence of the POR is indisput- able. Lora confirms that all basic documents and decisions of the Popular Assembly were introduced by the POR and passed virtually unanimously. How is the virtual unanimity, or their acceptance with few amendments explained, unless they contained elements of opportunist conciliationism? There can be no doubt about this. The POR leaders had terrible illusions about the Lechin tendency and the 160 Stalinists — illusions of the Pabloite type. The March 8 issue of ‘Mas- sas’ pointed out: ‘Torres feeds the counter revolution’ — meaning that Torres was aiding the movement of the junta right wing. (was not Torres then a counter-revolutionary?) This meant that a bitter fight was needed, not only against Torres, but also against his lackeys: Lechin and_ the Stalinists. But when ‘Massas’ coined the catch phrase: ‘Popular Assembly = workers’ power’, it created confusion of gigantic proportions. It was a deviation which ignored even the pos- sible dangers which Sossa mentions. The August rally organized by the Assembly showed, by the hostile reception given to Torres and Lechin, that the radicalization of the masses had surpassed the levels set by the Assembly. The situation was revolutionary. Even if under the influence of the opportunists, the con- fused masses were requesting arms from Torres, or asking him to strike against the right- wing junta. The consciousness of the masses was on a level similar to that described by Lenin in ‘Draft order for the disbandment of the Con- stituent Assembly’: ‘They rid themselves of the illusions of accord with the bourgeoisie, of the deceptive forms of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarism, and _ arrived at the conclusion to break with these forms and with every policy of compromise.’ This was the meaning of the jeers and_ catcalls which greeted Torres and Lechin. The revolution educates the class at the most rapid speed. Lechin’s Popular Assembly, which permitted Torres to address its rally, was bankrupt. Here the necessity for a real Trotskyist-Bolshevik party was demonstrated, a party free from Pabloite revisionism. ee The ‘Popular Assembly’ Programme If, from the theoretical and historical point of view, the abandonment of the soviets in favour of a ‘parliament’ described as a ‘Popular Assem- bly’ and embellished with a few genuine committee delega- tions, was unacceptable, from a political point of view it was disastrous, The masses, with justifica- tion, detested the bourgeois parliaments and _ congresses, whereas soviets always hold an attraction for the oppressed masses. The programme which the Popular Assembly put for- ward from the seat of the old Congress did not correspond either to the real historical requirements of the _ revolu- tionary situation, or to the needs of the oppressed. So, at the decisive moment, the Popular Assembly was not able to raise a popular insurrec- tion. Sossa, in the interview with ‘Informations Ouvriéres’ (July 7 and 15) presented us with the Popular Assembly’s pro- gramme: ‘The speeding up of the organization of the armed workers’ militia. ‘In the event of a coup the Popular Assembly will call for a General Strike. ‘The bringing to justice of those who, under Barrientos, were responsible for the mur- der of militants, ‘Examination of the pro- posals of the miners’ delegates for workers’ control of the nationalized Comibol mines. ‘Examination of a further miners’ demand for the crea- tion of a unified university which would not only end the autonomy of the eight univer- sities and clerical control of private education, but place the whole educational system under the control of the Popu- lar Assembly.’ The decision on the militias was ‘undoubtedly the most sig- nificant one’ (Sossa). But it was aimed against the coup prepared by Banzer and Gutier- rez, leader of the ‘Socialist Falange’, and it was linked to the demand for arms from Torres. There was nothing against the capitalist state or the counter-revolutionary inter- vention of Torres. But had the workers imple- mented this undoubtedly im- portant decision and taken up arms, they would have known where, how, and against whom to use them. The machine- guns of the workers and min- ers would have rung the death knell of the bourgeois-demo- cratic parliamentarists. Lechin, the Stalinists, and the groups that were the props of the nationalist bourgeoisie, voted for the proposal for the militia, but in action they sabotaged it by advocating the arming of the masses by Tor- Fourth International Summer 1972

[p016] res, and ‘pressurizing’ him to strike at the consiprators him- self! As for ‘Massas’, it came to the belated conclusion that: ‘The political development of the masses led them to the conviction that the time was irrevocably past for asking for arms from any “‘leftist’’ gen- eral, and that they should take them themselves, wherever they could find them.’ The misfortune was _ that ‘the moment was irrevocably past’ for agitation to arm the masses and for the POR lead- ers to rid themselves of illu- sions of pressurizing Torres into arming the workers. The error was fatal. And _ the result? Only the 2,000-odd miners who had been deeply influ- enced by Trotskyist traditions and a few other workers and students joined the battle which was fought around Lai- kacota hill in La Paz. The slogan of a General Strike ‘in the event of a coup’ was, of course, a most import- ant decision. But a_ general political strike should be moti- vated by the economic and democratic demands and com- bine the struggle against the right-wing conspiracy with the struggle against the employers and the state. Only with such a_ pro- gramme could they have achieved the mobilization of the masses as an independent factor, defeated the coup, and at the same time placed a noose around the neck of the Torres government, But there was no _ pro- gramme on the problem of the crisis of capitalism and against the financial oligarchy which was conspiring to place the burden of the crisis on the shoulders of the masses. The problems of the drop in the buying power of wages, the growth of unemployment, of the struggle for bread and for work, were not included in the Popular Assembly’s plans for mobilization. The problems of the agrarian reform, of pegging prices, debts and taxes, public works, expropriations, etc., were ignored. Marx’s recommenda- tion in 1856 that the peas- ants’ war should be combined with the workers’ movement was forgotten. The poor peas- ants, who, in their struggle against the landlords, needed peasants’ soviets, were now turning their backs on the ‘pre- Bolivia parliament’ of Torres and Lechin. The programme of the Pop- ular Assembly demanded jus- tice for the victims of Bar- rientos. It was not even ‘anti- dictatorial’ against Torres, The anti-capitalist content was removed from the general poli- tical strike, which is a higher stage on the road to revolu- tion. There was no plan of action for the general disrup- tion of the army and for the winning over of the soldiers as a basic factor in the gen- eral arming of the masses, around the soldiers’ soviets. There was no plan to popu- larize the Transitional Pro- gramme or to outline the tasks of the party in the spirit of Lenin's April Theses. The slogan for a workers’ and peasants’ government was de- void of any content. The workers’ and peasants’ government The crisis of world capitalism created a revolutionary situa- tion in Bolivia. For the bourgeoisie there was no margin for concession—hence their need for dictatorship. Quite correctly the Trotsky- ists raised the question of the workers’ and peasants’ govern- ment. But what would be its character? The revolution could not have been anything but proletarian. And __ this revolution would have created the workers’ and peasants’ government. The POR leaders should have made a clear analysis of the revolution—and clarified the character of such a govern- ment. All the more, since by sup- porting the programme of the trade unions into which the Stalinists had introduced the Strategy of the bourgeois- democratic revolution, they should have separated their position on this strategy. For the Trotskyists, the establishment of the workers’ and peasants’ government was synonymous with the dictator- ship of the proletariat. Its meaning was adulterated by the Pabloites on their slippery road of opportunism. They gave it the meaning of an in- termediate government — be- tween the bourgeois and prole- tarian powers — a sort of Stalinist version of the ‘demo- cratic dictatorship of workers and peasants’—the product of an intermediate revolution. We in Greece, during the events of July 1965, in sup- porting the workers’ and peasants’ government as a pseudonym of the dictatorship of the proletariat, had to fight the Pabloite conception of the workers’ and peasants’ govern- ment as an_ intermediate government prior to the dic- tatorship of the proletariat. However, in the same period, the formula of the ‘workers’ and peasants’ government’ of a_ bourgeois type crept into the line of the International Committee via an article of the Hungarian section printed without com- ment in ‘La Verité’. How did this leap to the theory of the intermediate government come about? Was there perhaps a common logic between the old view of the French section on the ‘workers’ and peasants’ govern- ment’ of Castro and this adul- terated interpretation of the ‘workers’ and peasants’ government’? Well, the French Organiza- tion Communiste International- iste has now come into the open. ‘Information Ouvriéres’ of August 26, 1971, stood for ‘a workers’ and peasants’ govern- ment of the united workers’ organizations ... which would restore and broaden all demo- cratic liberties and secure the free struggle of the masses against the bourgeoisie and its state’. As for the workers’ and peasants’ government, in the sense of being synonymous with the dictatorship of the proletariat, it was regarded as being no more than the distant music of the future. That is all. A government of Stalinists and pseudo-socialists, who have proven throughout the world to be the shameless agents of the bourgeoisie and have passed over to open counter-revolution, was sup- posed to restore liberties and assist the struggle of the masses to overthrow capital- ism! This renegation from the dictatorship of the proletariat in the epoch of the death agony of capitalism, when the question of power had appeared on the _ agenda, created terrible illusions, just like those of the Pabloites about the self-democratization of the bureaucracy, revolutions led by the CP, etc. The tactic of ‘breaking with the bourgeoisie’ which accord- ing to the Transitional Pro- 161

[p017] gramme, we can and must de- mand from the parties of be- trayal does not, in any cir- cumstances, mean that agita- tion for revolution and for a real workers’ and peasants’ -government should be re- linquished. On the contrary, agitation for the revolution must not only not weaken: it is in fact —together with agitation for soviets—of decisive signifi- cance in a correct strategy aiming for a workers’ and pe:sants’ government. On the other hand, the pro- cess of fighting for a pseudo- workers’ and peasants’ govern- ment presupposes replacement of the methodology of civil war with that of pacifism. ‘Such a government must break from the bourgeoisie, call on the masses to organize in councils, organize workers’ control in production, place all power in the hands of the councils and destroy the bourgeois state machine’! Hey presto! The parties of betrayal are turned into organs of revo- lution. This is really a cloud cuckoo land! When the Transitional Pro- gramme speaks of ‘a workers’ and peasants’ government’ as an ‘exceptionally unlikely pos- sibility’, as a ‘brief stopping place on the road to the real dictatorship of the proletariat’ it does not ‘lend itself to pre- sumptions’ so historically long- term and ambitious as those of our miracle workers. It stresses: ‘Agitation around the slogan of the workers’ and 162 peasants’ government retains in all conditions a_ colossal educational value.’ However, the bloc of the French, Hun- garian and Bolivian sections of the International Committee advance the slogan of the bourgeois workers’ and peas- ants’ government as a perman- ent central task of the period and subtract the agitation for soviets and for the revolution. This ‘workers’ and peasants’ government’ means disorienta- tion from the conquest of power and, combined with the suppression of the slogan for soviets in favour of the Popu- lar Assembly is tantamount to a refusal on our part to go further than the bourgeois- democratic limits in the spirit of the Permanent Revolution, and adoption on our part of the Stalinist-Menshevik theory of stages and taking the ‘Chilean’ parliamentary road to socialism (like Pablo). ‘Reality does not excuse even a single theoretical error.’ And yet we see here the dis- tortion of the tactic of the United Front which leads to the government of the United Front and from which we ex- pect an impetus to the revolu- tionary struggle—thus weaken- ing its ability to undermine the treacherous leaders. Here we must also note the underesti- mation on principle of the sig- nificance of an alliance with the poor layers of the country- side. It is no accident that the slogans for soviets and for a workers’ and peasants’ govern- ment were absent from the programme of the French organization during the May- June days in 1968. Not only because the over-ripe and over - revolutionary situation was most criminally under- estimated (opportunism is used to under-estimating the revo- lutionary upsurge and over- estimating the resilience of capitalism), but also because they were disorientated from the basic tasks of the move- ment which could be summed up as: ‘Down with de Gaulle! Long live the workers’ and peasants’ government!’ From this standpoint the position of the French in 1968 was to the right of the Bolivian organization in 1971. In conclusion, in Bolivia, as elsewhere, we must struggle for soviets, in which the masses would recognize the organ of leadership which strikes decisively for power and for a real workers’ and peasants’ government. ‘The organization of soviets’, Lenin stresses in his draft for the dissolution of the Con- stituent Assembly, ‘is the only one able to lead the struggle of the class for its total politi- cal and economic liberation.’ The only one. We have no need of illegiti- mate ‘Popular Assemblies of a soviet type’ which were sup- ported not only by Lechin, Allende, the Stalinists and the Pabloites, but also the ‘reno- vators’ of the soviets of ‘In- formations Ouvriéres’. Greece, December 26, 1971. Fourth international Summer 1972

[p018] Statement by the Greek section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, in reply to the