Bolivia exposes sham of capitalist reforms

The history of South America’s Pink Tide exposes the sham of capitalist reform as a solution for the international working class. The track record of recently ousted Bolivian president Evo Morales is the latest proof. Workers in Bolivia have never run society; they control nothing. Before, during, and after Morales, the capitalist bosses have kept their iron grip on the Bolivian economy, courts, legislature, police, and army. Under the murderous profit system, the state serves the capitalist ruling class, first and last.
Only a communist revolution can create real power for workers to run all aspects of society, to create a world based on anti-racism and anti-sexism, and to fulfill the needs of the international working class.
Though workers in Bolivia have taken to the streets in militant mass protests, their militancy is being wasted on two anti-working class options. On one side is the Morales camp, backed by Russian and Chinese imperialists. On the other is new president Jeanine Anez, a far-right evangelical Christian whose interim government appointed the first Bolivian ambassador to the U.S. since 2008. Both sides are rotten and lethal.
We call on all workers to reject the dead end of indigenous nationalist identity politics, which kept Morales in power for 13 years. Identity politics fractures and disarms our class and prevents class-conscious solidarity. When we view ourselves as inherently different or opposed to other groups of workers, we are doing the bosses’ work. A revolutionary communist movement unites workers against the root cause of racism: the bosses’ drive for maximum profit.
Pink Tide is not workers’ power
Before Morales, Bolivia had an apartheid-like society that exploited, impoverished, and marginalized indigenous workers. As the country’s first indigenous president, Morales used his Movement for Socialism (MAS) to exploit workers as a power base. He paid them with crumbs: low-level government jobs, an indigenous flag, and a reduction in “extreme” poverty. But as Morales fled to exile in Mexico, Bolivia still has one of the highest poverty rates in South America at 39 percent (Borgen Project).
While cutting deals with foreign bosses, Morales nationalized the petrochemical industries. He funneled money to favored local capitalists and distributed proceeds from exports to buy votes. He allowed the mining industry to encroach on indigenous lands. To consolidate his power base, Morales also spent billions on infrastructure, access to healthcare, and education reform.
But capitalist reforms are always temporary. Just as in Venezuela, the falling global price of oil cut into Bolivia’s revenues. Squeezed for cash, Morales betrayed his promises to protect indigenous lands and the people who live on them. In 2017, he broke his word and approved the construction of a 190-mile highway through a national park in the Amazon:
The highway, Morales argued, was necessary to bring basic services to remote tribes. But native groups and environmentalists were enraged:
The road...  would facilitate drug trafficking, illegal logging and other unwanted activity. Protesters marched for more than a month, during which police and demonstrators clashed in clouds of tear gas and flurries of rubber bullets (Reuters, 8/24/18).
Neither identity politics nor fake-left democratic “socialism” will liberate our class. We must understand that the fight for a just world is intertwined with the larger struggle to destroy capitalism.
Imperialism is the name of the game
For some years now, as U.S. imperialism declines and retreats, Chinese and Russian imperialists have moved into Bolivia to fill the vacuum. This competition is a lose-lose proposition for the working class in Bolivia. No matter which superpower takes charge, workers will be left at the mercy of the bosses’ capitalist system.
The president before Morales, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, went too far in “restructuring” the Bolivian economy to suit the interests of the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund. He pushed for tax increases and other austerity measures that triggered mass unrest and ultimately forced his resignation. As a former coca grower, union leader, and leading member of Lozada’s opposition, Morales exploited anti-U.S. mass anger to get elected.
Soon after Morales took power, Russian companies began investing heavily in Bolivia. Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear monopoly, got a contract to build a $300 million nuclear center near La Paz, the Bolivian capital, and began negotiating a concession to develop Bolivia’s large lithium reserves. Gazprom PJSC, the Russian state-controlled natural gas company, has been in Bolivia since 2010 (Bloomberg Opinion, 11/11). The Chinese imperialists also came calling: “Between 2000 and 2014, bilateral trade between Bolivia and China increased nearly 3,000 percent, from $75.3 million to $2.25 billion...” (COHA, 8/31).
The finance capital, main wing of  the U.S. ruling class (aka the Big Fascists) sees Morales’ ouster as a chance to regain some of its lost imperialist influence in Latin America. It’s seeking to support a pro-U.S. president who could stem the Russian and Chinese bosses’ growing presence in the region. Anez is auditioning for the job.
At the same time, U.S. rulers are worried about the recent wave of mass protests across Latin America. The liberal main wing bosses stand for a more disciplined ruling class—a hallmark of fascism—and a more regulated, less openly greedy brand of capitalism. The flagrant inequality in countries like Bolivia is not sustainable. In Chile, meanwhile, the working class exploded over a four-cent transit fare hike. The main wing U.S. bosses understand that they and their South American allies can’t continue to rule in the old way.
The capitalist profit system exists solely for the enrichment of a few off of the backs of the masses. Any gains made by working class reform struggles are always taken back. Workers cannot rely on identity politics or the bosses’ elections to fix this inherently racist, sexist, unequal system. Left-sounding rhetoric by stooges like Morales can’t change the basic conflict between bosses and workers. Only a society run by workers and for workers can bring our class the anti-racist, anti-sexist equality we deserve. Join Progressive Labor Party!