Bolivia- Three Thoughts

0) I was a kid of the End of History. 

I grew up with the notion and conviction that there is no future, or better: that any future will look just like the late 90s or early 2000s. Years before the crisis of 2007/8, capitalism appeared as the uncontested and uncontestable victor of history, and thus, when I finally at the tender age of 15 started reading Marx, Engels, Lenin and others, this was nothing but an awkward and ridiculous form of rebellion: Communism? An anachronistic survivor of a past age, to which only some outlandish freaks, elderly people from the east and Fidel Castro stick!. I remember very well how even mentioning the term 'capitalism' in school gave you the looks (of my boring and rather simple classmates and my boring and rather simple teachers); it appeared to them, I assume, as a freakish, ideological term coined by some Marxists from back then, when people not understood that "market economy" is just a natural and begning thing.

Well, then of course came 2007/8 and I still smile when I think of my economics teacher being unable to explain class what was going on - perhaps he simply could not wrap his head around the very idea of crisis. What the crisis did and still does is reinstalling the idea that capitalism is a system, that it exists, that it can be contested and has immanent contradictions. The present rise of the radical Left (yes we did rise and communism is back in the game again, maybe without tanks (as of yet) but nonetheless we should learn to acknoweldge our own strength -which is very well a topic for another article) is still a result of the cataclysmic events of/after the crisis of 2007/8 which in the end have sown doubts in capitalism,

Yet before all this transpired, the outlook seemed bleak: Capitalism was stable and there were no alternatives- and yet: There were these Latin American uprisings and movements, there were Bolivarismo, Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa and of course Evo Morales. Their movement(s), now condensed under the term "the pink tide" (a somewhat stupid generalization, as Correa's "revolucion de los ciudadanos" had few in common with Chavez's "socialismo del seculo 21", not to speak of whatever it was, Kirchner did in Agrentina) provided a hope for those of us who still wished to challenge capitalism.

In the forming years of my politicization, I was therefore excited by everything that came out of Latin America, and soon became an unconditional supporter for Chavez and the concept of a "socialism of the 21st century". I read everything I could get my hands on, about Venezuela, about its assembly systems, about the ecological ideals of Morales; I bingeread novels from these countries, to understand their cultural disposition, I learnt some Spanish and engaged with their political theory, working my way through theoreticians now already forgotten, like Tomas Moulin or Heinz Dieterich.

Of course, as I learnt more about Marxism and came into contact with comrades from all over the world, my uncritical appraisal of "the pink tide" waned. I started to question the theoretical base of "the socialism of the 21st century", until I understood that it is but a rubbish, make-shift ideology to cover up social democratic populism, and soon became (and still am) highly critical of a number of policitcal decissions by the "Bolivarniarist" governments (just think of their solidarity with Iran which is unworthy of any Leftist). And yet: Even though this is what it is (and even though it seems true to me what once a comrade from Venezuela, a communist, said to me about their government: "Reformism! They are radical because they know that only radical reforms can save capitalism"), I still feel connected to these movements and their leaders. When everything lay in the darknes of triumphant capitalism, they were a beacon for me and millions of comrades round the world.

For that reason, I cried when I first read of the coup d' etat in Bolivia. It seems like an era is ending, like a hope had failed us and another future is dead.

And that is true. 

But: World history opens up new gates for the Angel of History, while reatcion nowadays struggles to kill yet another future.

So, where are we now?

1) Bolivia reveals our enemy's weakness.

This may sound strange in the wake of a coup d'etat against a leftwing government, but becomes clearer if we think through the actual nature of what is happening. 

None of the government in Latin America that subscribed to one or another version of -for the lack of a better term- anti-neoliberal politics actually challanged capitalism. Sure, there were more radical governments like the Venezuelan and, to a certain extend, Bolivia, which nationalized part of their national economy (most and above all mining corporations), but even these actions, though they seem radical, did not change the system. We should remember: Capitalism, as Marx shows us, is a mode of production, that is characterized by the socialization of work and the privatization of profit. It does not matter if the capitalist, i.e. the concrete entity that makes capital manifest, is a person, an entity (like a fund) or even a state (the capitalist state acts, but this is also for another discussion, in Marx's analysis as ideal capitalist). So, even though the state in, say Venezuela, might own a company, this does not necessarily affect economy: The company can work as before, only that its profits are now consumed by the state; the same holds for the market which is not challenged, the rationale of competition and profit making are held in place etc. Thus, the nationalization of a company means only to exchange the entity that serves as mediator of capital, if this exappropriation is not accompanied by a social and economic transformation that lays the foundation for a society and economy ruled by and for the people -i.e.: a dictatorship of the proletariat via social revolution.

The socialists of the 21st century did not want this. Indeed, Dieterich, one of their main ideolouge, explicetly condemned the very idea of communism, to challenge state power and errect a dictatorship -which were the basic reasons it failed in the 20th century according to his writings. Instead, he proposed a mixed economy where certain sectors were governed (either through Keynesian politics or direct control) by the state for the common good, and others remained within the market, albeit under the auspicies by the state which had to guarantee that social and ecological standards are met. The aim of this policy lies not in the messianic hope of the abolition of class society, but in "social justice" in the sense of distributing wealth and chances equally and fairily .

And this is what the anti-neoliberal governments in Latin America did.

From Kirchner to Correa, from Lula to Chavez, from Ortega to Morales, they did not abolish private property, they did not attac freedom of speech, errect scafolds for the rich, send round the cheka to rout the kulaks. They simply redistributed some wealth, oftentimes using rent (like oil in Venezuela) to organize various social programs, lifting millions out of poverty, etc. Old fashioned social democractic politics, more related with Mitterand or Brandt than with Marx or Lenin.

And yet, they faced from the very begining fierce resistence by capital, by reaction. Not only the USA, which meddles in Latin America ever since, but local elites, the Catholic Church, evangelical idiots, fascists, liberals, etc.pp....in one word: all the spawn of the cesspole of 21st century idiocy put day by day the anti-neoliberal movements under pressure, although they were completely harmless (which is proven by the sheer fact that traitors like Guaido are allowed to live on, while they would be at least in prison by now in basically every other state of the world). These massive and oftentimes violent reactions drove back "the pink tide" and resulted in a series of attempted or suceeded coup d'etats, notably in Honduras, Venezuela (several times by now), Brasil and now Bolivia. 

In other terms: Even the moderate reforms, brought forth by the anti-neoliberal governments, are to much to bear for capital at the moment. Nobody insinuated to bring down Mitterand by a military coup in the 1980s, no capitalist financed right wing militias to start a civil war against Brandt an no liberal American News channel condemned Britain's welfare state as a brutal, communist abomination. But in our present, whenever people at the periphery elect a slightly socialdemocratic government, capitalists enter their panic rooms, as if Josef himself would have risen from his grave at the Kremlin wall to hunt them all down.

This signifies two things: First, capitalism and the forces of reaction, although they seem strong, are weak at their core. They simply can no longer cope with leftwing, populist governments that only slightly interfer with the market, but any, even the slightest change in the state of affairs has become such a big danger for capital that it is prepared to use even desperate measures to defend the status quo. In my opinion, this newest putsch showed thus that capital and reaction have no other option left but brute force to discipline rebellious people and dissident government (whose dissidence consists in nothing more than creating a social welfare state).

Yet this means, secondly, that the immanent contradictions of capital are radicalized. We approach, probably, another economic crisis, the world system is in disorder, the institutions of globalized capitalism are only partially functioning, the markets are exhausted.Capital's violence and the rise of the right is thus a sign of their growing despair.

This is not a good news in itself, but maybe a shimmer of hope.

2) Forget about liberals 

A shimmer of hope, I wrote, but not hope itself. Although our enemy is weak and we the Western Left is getting stronger, we still are in no place to in any way meaningfully attack capitalism. In fact, even now, when our comrades are bleeding, tortured and killed in Bolivia, when Rojava's dreams are burning to ashes under Turkish gunfire, when the fascist mobs kill and mutilate in India, in Hungary, in the USA, in Germany - we are not able to do more than some symbolic marches. It occurs to me these days that indeed many comrades prefer it to agitate for the next stupid climate event, while the right destroys what is left of the international left.

This is a common phenomenon: While Rojava enjoys the support of the Western Left (again, only symbolical support of course, nobody dare to get her hands dirty), which may very well be only due to media coverage and due to the fact that many of our best comrades went there, most revolutionary movements outside the Western hemisphere are disregarded. Few showed solidarity with the comrades in Iran, nobody is interested in the left wing parties in Africa, or the people's wars in India or the Phillipines. In fact, I know of many comrades who make fun of these movements or disregard them as irrelevant for what they perceive as real (i.e. white, European) politics - a feature shared by various sects, from scoail chauvinists, like Nagle and her left case for borders, to socialists focussing on the senator Bernard Sanders to the miserable sects of Trotzkyism which still cling to the idea that a magically enlightened white industrial worker (a figure no longer existing) will save us all, if he (sic) sticks to the writings of Leo, the Saint.

This lack of international solidarity becomes obvious now in the cases of Latin America. While for quite some time, people stopped talking about the countries and their political theories and practices there, nobody shows now even practical solidarity. Quite the opposite, various liberal newspapers (I wont link any here, they should not get publicity) even expressed their support of the coup d'etat, describing it as an act of democracy.

While this is in itself ridiculous, it teaches us a lesson about liberals and our own liberalism.

Liberalism has, this has been said many times, become a force of neoliberalism, and nobody has enforced neoliberalism better than the liberal governments, lilke the Clintons, Blairs, etc. of this world. This holds true even in the microcosmos of daily life: The liberal wants to preserve her small world; when she talks about democracy and fighting fascism, she means the right to tinder while drinking her 4,5 Macha tea in this cool shared workspace, down the road. When she fights for LBTQ-rights, she means the right to go to this fancy party in this new club in the factory that was closed recently, leaving 1000 workers without jobs. And when she protests rightwing populism, she means that she is in reality disgusted by the idea that these guys on the other side might not hold a college degree. In one word, liberals will never show solidarity with the down trotten, the proletariat, the non-European peoples. Although preaching anti-racism, any act of revolutionary selfdetermination is defied. 

So, we come to the funny situation, that even this year, liberal climate protestors, joined by liberal media flagships, attacked the Bolivian government (the now exiled Morales), for not complying to their vision of ecological virtue. Many of them are rejoicing now, although a leader who has even introduced the idea of protecting nature into constitution, is driven out his office by military force.

This must mean for us: We have to break with the liberals. It is of no use, to engage with them, to build the 1000th united front, when liberals will anywhere and anytime fall for the wrong side. They may stay with us in line to protest climate change and fascism, but in practice they themselves are practically opposed to all politics that actually fight climate change or fascism.

3) Democratic Socialism has failed...yet again

This last point is a short one.

As indicated above, the main point of the Latin American Left was to try out a variation of reformist, democratic socialist politics. Through parliamentary elections and humble reforms a redistribution of wealth should be achieved. 

This failed.

As it did in France in the 1980s, in Germany in the 1970s, as it did in Greece 2017. What failed us was democracy. It failed us in Chile -tenthousands of comrades tortured to death - it failed us in Burkina Faso, in Brasil, in Honduras, and now in Bolivia. In Rojava, the probably most democratic society in the world, militias are literally singing the Battlecry of Freedom, praising US-american freedom, and yet they are slaughtered by Islamist barbarians.

And although we know all this, the mainstream of the radical Left believes that somehow an old US-American senator or a British social democrat earn our support because they harbour the radical idea of not letting the poor starve to death (nothing more is Labour or DSA promissing, don't be fooled).

This is very well due to our priviledged position: We are not the ones that get tortured by the the forces of freedom and democracy, we do not have to fear the hencmen of Modi, of Erdogan etc. Thus, we can sit in the safety of our appartments and prepare for a radical act: Vote Labour. While some thousand kilometers away, an unknown comrade is burning to death, just because she wanted a free, an equal, a liberated society.

This is the state of affairs of the democratic, Western Left.

I will not venture further in this topic, the direction is clear. Comrade Badiou has written several good pieces about democracy, I propose to read them and maybe to rethink our strategy. This is necessary in my eyes in the face of a deep crisis of capitalism and in confrontation with the suffering of our comrades in Bolivia and everywhere in the world.

Long live Solidarity!