A Suicidal Line in Bolivia’s Political Crisis

Juan Rey

Labor Action, 17th March, 1952

Santiago, March 2. In spite of all the political defeats which we have analysed in previous articles, of the pro-nationalist policy of the Bolivian “official Trotskyist” group, especially in relation to the MNR [National Revolutionary Movement], they remain mired in their mistakes. The MNR’s gains in the last election seem to be the major glory of the Bolivian Trotskyists. They are not only backing the Nationalist leadership but are also demanding all political power for that party.

Latest news is that the official section of the Fourth International, the POR [Revolutionary Workers Party] has published an open letter to the military junta, the present government of Bolivia, demanding that the latter hand over the government to the MNR party, without any new elections, on the grounds that the last election gave it a majority. This gratuitous support for the MNR nationalists, who are very well known for their dependence upon Peron and for their pro-Hitlerist sympathies previously, militates against the most elementary consciousness of the Latin American workers. It is true enough that the majority of the mine and factory workers are backing the nationalist party, but the obligation of revolutionaries should be to unmask the mistaken policies of the nationalist leadership and show the masses the right political road to independent class struggle.

As we have written before, the political situation in Bolivia is very strange; the Nationalist Party, though defeated by an uprising, remains the strongest political party in the country because of the reactionary anti-labour policy of the “democratic” Right, which ended in an electoral defeat and a military dictatorship. But all this is also a consequence of the adventurist and mistaken policy of the Nationalists, Stalinists and “official Trotskyists”, who exposed the workers to the right wing massacres.

It is true that a political change is necessary in Bolivia, for the “bourgeois-democratic” Right is totally bankrupt. It is also true that the country must pass through a nationalist experience; but this does not necessitate support for the totalitarian-nationalist party by the workers’ opposition, especially by the Trotskyist opposition. If the workers’ party has to fight the ruling circles, the military Right, this does not mean that it must support a nationalist party which, in power, will persecute the workers’ organizations as it has done in the past.

But the Bolivian POR is a tail of the MNR. The POR has grown in the shadow of the MNR.

In theoretical terms, the mistake in Bolivia lies in a wrong view of the perspective of the Latin American revolution. This view is that the next revolution will be a bourgeois-democratic revolution which will solve the anachronistic agrarian problem and will eliminate the economic and colonial dependence of Latin America on imperialism. In this revolution the nationalist petty bourgeois parties will perhaps play a big role.

But to go through this historical stage the workers’ party has to conquer political power and unleash the Socialist proletarian revolution. Their theory, which is based upon Lenin’s old theory which he in fact revised in l9l7, is entirely inadequate for our historical epoch. In Latin America, and especially in Bolivia and Peru, if the agrarian and colonial problems are to be solved, they will be solved only by a Socialist revolution directed by the revolutionary proletariat – that is, a Socialist revolution which will in passing solve the anachronistic problems of the democratic revolution, without losing its Socialist and proletarian character.

Therefore, the role of the petty bourgeois nationalist or Stalinist parties will be very small and without historical importance. Today the policy of the MNR and POR is conducive to the counter-revolution and is reactionary [...].

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