The 1952 Revolution

by José Villa

Part 18

The Desire To Transform The MNR

The huge adaptation of the POR to the MNR is seen not only in its attempts to shift the cabinet leftwards but in wanting to transform the bourgeois MNR so that it would be turned into an anti-capitalist revolutionary party. The POR went so far as to write an open letter to the MNR convention where it put forward the position that, if the MNR moved leftward, it could absorb the POR.

“The convention should be worker-peasant and not bureaucratic (...) The left wing should impose revolutionary demands without fear of reaction and imperialism”. (99) (LO, supplement, 3.2.53, p.4.)

The POR held the suicidal belief that Lechínism could declare and impose a revolutionary programme to turn the MNR in a revolutionary direction.

“The MNR is certainly a party in transition from traditional or reformist politics to the new politics of the revolutionary transformation of the proletariat as the leader of the whole oppressed society.” (100) (LO 11.11.52, p.3.)

“The main essential doctrinal foundation required to play a decisive role in the present period can only be obtained by modifying, in its turn, the social composition of the party. Its uniform social nature could be achieved around the main social force of anti-imperialist struggle. The most powerful and decisive social force is made up of exploited workers and peasants. It is around these social forces that the unity of the party must be attained.”

According to the POR a struggle had to continue so that “the workers and peasants of the MNR impose a programme that reflects their own interests, and likewise impose a leadership that reflects the interests of the exploited. The present task is to ensure that the MNR must be controlled by the exploited masses”. The exploited will never be able to control a party created by and for the bourgeoisie.

“Only on condition that it takes the consistent progressive step of adopting a programme of principles in accord with the upsurge of the masses then carrying it out, will the MNR be able to play the role imposed on it by circumstances.”

“Solid worker cadres in the MNR, elimination of counter-revolutionary tendencies, a political programme which represents the interests of the exploited classes, in brief the absolute pre-eminence of the working class within the MNR ranks is the only thing that can give the MNR an important role in the revolutionary course towards the Worker-Peasant government.” (101) (LO, 11.11.52, p.3.)

The POR distinguishes counter revolutionary wings from another, or others, supposedly revolutionary ones. The one certain thing is that all wings of the MNR were and are counter-revolutionary.

“If the MNR wants to maintain its status as a mass party it will have to be more sensitive to their aspirations; it will have to integrate the demands for which they fought and which they will never renounce, into its programme. That will not be done unless the representatives of caciquism and imperialism are expelled from the party (...) This is the only possibility of survival remaining open to the MNR: to stop keeping the workers and peasants out of its ranks but, on the contrary, to give them the greatest influence over the party leadership.” (102) (LO, 29.11.52, p.2.)

“If the MNR does not organically change itself, expelling the rightists, freemasons, adventurers, businessmen and carpetbaggers from its ranks, it will become the gravedigger of the revolution (...) If the left wing succeeds in taking charge and having a working class face, the POR is ready to work with it and even to fuse with it. This new party form ought to be reflected in the forms of government which can only be a worker- peasant government.” (103)(LO, Supplement, 3.2.53, p.3.)

No matter how many workers a bourgeois party has it does not change its class character. While the POR struggled to get more workers into the MNR Trotskyists should have struggled for more workers to leave it. The POR’s line had been much more serious than simply seeking to reform the government and so advance towards a worker-peasant government. The POR based its whole strategy on trying to reform the solidly bourgeois MNR. This demanded greater participation of the labour bureaucrats in the leadership, greater ‘sensitivity’ from the top chiefs and more verbiage. All the problems of Bolivia could have been dealt with if more workers had been in the MNR and they had strengthened the left wing which would have been the most demagogic of them.

It proposed that the same party which only four years before it had labelled ‘nazi-fascist’ should now turn itself in the party of the social revolution. Furthermore if the rightist elements had been purged and the Chávez and Lechín left wing had taken charge the POR would have agreed to fuse with the MNR. A revolutionary party can never fuse with a counter-revolutionary one, even less so when it is leading the class enemy.

The positions of the POR were worse than those of Stalinism when it betrayed the Chinese revolution in 1927. In the latter, thanks to the policy of the Chinese CP which wanted to support and transform the Guomindang, bourgeois nationalism, once it had used the Communists to gain power, massacred them in the slaughter of Shanghai. Trotsky attacked the Stalinist Comintern for “consider(ing) the Kuomintang not as a bourgeois party, but as a neutral area of struggle for the masses (...) to assist the (summit) to convert ever broader masses into ‘cattle’, and under conditions most favourable to it to prepare the Shanghai coup d’etat (...) they imagined that by means of ordinary elections at Kuomintang Congresses power would pass from the hands of the bourgeoisie to the proletariat.” (104) (The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder, New York, 1970, p.218.)

The left wing was no more than a demagogic tribune used by that bourgeois party in order to distract the masses and to get them to accept a solution of complete capitulation to imperialism. Chávez ended up as vice president to the leader of the MNR right-wing. Lechín ended up supporting all the imperialists’ plans totally, such as the triangular one and by visiting Nationalist China with the object of getting US endorsement for his management of their semi-colony.

As a consequence of that line, in 1954, the whole of the POR old guard (Warqui, Ayala etc) all the POR leaders of the COB, (Moller, Zegada) and the great majority of Lora’s Leninist Workers Faction dissolved themselves and went into the MNR.

Previous Chapter: The Disintegration And Reorganisation Of The Armed Forces
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