Back in July 2007, I reviewed Ben Dangl's The Price of Fire, an excellent book that described how Bolivians collectively organized against the neoliberal globalization process to preserve their access to the resources necessary for their survival. Now, Dangl is back with a new book, Dancing with Dynamite, addressing the problematic relationship that the social movements of several South American countries have with the left leaning governments of the region. Many of these movements are associated with the historic grievances of campesinos and indigenous peoples going back centuries.

It is a timely subject, one that, as with most issues associated with South America, we are tempted to push to the side because of our ongoing, necessary preoccupations with the perpetually expanding war on terror and the sub-proletarianization of the US and Europe. But, given that the people there have resisted the postmodern atomization of social life throughout much of the rest of the world, and insisted upon alternatives to neoliberalism, we should remain engaged with what is happening there. For, it is primarily within South America that we perceive the prospect of either a post-capitalist order or one in which the voraciousness of capital is sharply curtailed. His work provides us with new insights and encourages us to speculate about the social forces that will shape the future.

Generally, Dangl presents a dynamic whereby social movements seek to obtain greater autonomy within the nation state, sometimes in conflict with the electoral left within government and sometimes not, while aligning with leftist political parties when necessary to prevent the reemergence of right wing control as it is universally acknowledged that a return to rightist repression and neoliberal economic policy would be catastrophic. He suggests that social movements retain the most effectiveness in terms of achieving their aspirations and containing the rightist threat, when they preserve an independent stance in relation to the political process. Dangl describes this complex, often contradictory relationship between social movements and leftist political parties as a dance, one that requires cooperation without cooptation.

Both Bolivia and Venezuela are interesting examples of how this dynamic plays out on the ground because of their relative distance from American influence. Not surprisingly, the chapters about the social movements in these countries are the longest ones in the book, and Dangl brings out the similarities and differences in regard to the relationship of their social movements to the state. Both countries are governed by charismatic leaders, who, by virtue of their personal appeal, have the capability of incorporating independent activism into their electoral organizations. But both also require a vibrant, activist culture to remain politically viable.

However, in Bolivia, Dangl relates how Morales, and his political party, the Movement Toward Socialism, the MAS, have, by and large, successfully channeled pre-existing demands for the transformation of society into the decisionmaking processes of representative government. He expresses concern about his discovery that the community organizations of El Alto, once a center of anti-authoritarian resistance to state authority, have become quiescent. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Chavez remains an inspirational figure for millions of poor Venezuelans, one who encourages them to take charge of their communities through demands for public services, such as water and power, as well as by seeking legal recognition of land seizures, housing developments and cooperative factory takeovers, frequently in the face of institutional resistance. Paradoxically, social movements in Venezuela face the challenge of becoming powerful enough to effectively organize themselves independent of the government, while those in Bolivia struggle to preserve their hard fought independence.

Perhaps, this is attributable to the differing socioeconomic terrain in the two countries. Social movements in Bolivia, especially ones involving indigenous peoples, have the express purpose of decentralizing power to the point of achieving the dissolution of the nation state itself. Conversely, decentralization has been a prominent feature of Venezuelan life for decades, with the people there having lived through the rapid urbanization of the country in the absence of a strong administrative presence. Furthermore, indigenous people play a more prominent role in Bolivia because they constitute a substantial part of the population, while, in Venezuela, they are much less so. Hence, the people of Bolivia have a stronger tradition of resistance to the nation state form of organization imposed by Europeans, resulting in a strong anti-authoritarian sensibility, while the Venezuelan left retains the influence of Trotsky and Luxemburg, probably reinforced through various waves of immigration. But, despite such different ideological traditions, Dangl implies that the momemtum in both countries appears to be in the same direction, towards the creation of a highly democratized Keynesian social welfare state.

Unfortunately, there is a more sinister possibility, as revealed by Dangl's exploration of social and political conditions in Paraguay. In 2008, former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo won the presidential election there, a historic victory for the left in a country dominated by an oligarchy for decades. But, upon visiting there, Dangl discovers that little has changed in the last two years. One political analyst tells Dangl that the powerful interests in the country can be described as follows:

1) the oligarchy, consisting of soy growers and cattle ranchers who rely upon paramilitaries to allow them to expand

2) the narco-traffickers who pay off politicians

3) the lumpen business class, which relies upon international trade and black market goods

4) the transnational corporations who that buy and export soy, cotton and sugar

Accordingly, poor urban and campesino movements remain marginalized, despite Lugo's victory. Campesinos are finding it hard to retain their land against the incursions of the transnational soy business, tragically related to Dangl through the experiences of the victims, much less obtain more through land reform.

Of course, one can imagine similar outcomes in other countries throughout the region, including left bastions like Venezuela and Bolivia, as James Petras has already done. There is nothing irreversible about what has transpired there, particularly given the personality cults centered around Morales and Chavez. Such a propect points toward something that deserves investigation beyond what Dangl has done in Dancing with Dynamite, the role of the industrialized workforce in the social transformation of South America. In his chapter on Brazil, Dangl contrasts the laudable radicalism of the landless workers movement, the MST, with the accommodation of President Lula, and his party, the Worker's Party, the PT, with international capital. The proletariat, and its informalized brethren, are noteworthy for their absence and it is a significant one, given the industrialization of Brazil with the assistance of foreign investment since World War II.

An examination of the relationship between unions, pension funds and foreign investment in Brazil might be revelatory in this regard. Consider, for example, Francisco de Oliveira's evaluation of Lula's record in 2006:

Lula’s reconstruction of the system of power, after the dizzying decomposition that had led to his own election, has been geared around a further, externally oriented shift towards financialization and export-led growth, with new relations of domination powerfully over-determined by globalized capital. Exports have been led by the expanding agribusiness sector. With few exceptions, the other export fronts are in low value-added commodities, with little capacity for establishing strong, inter-industrial relations or self-sustaining growth processes on a national scale. These sectors have limited means for binding together broad social interests and generally tend towards a strong concentration of wealth, as exemplified by agribusiness, founded on an expropriated workforce.

In Brazil’s semi-peripheral economy, capitalization was always closely tied to the state. Financialization, in its latest form, has also been dependent on state-linked capital, via the pension funds of public-sector enterprises; these were developed as a type of private welfare insurance by the military dictatorship, on the model of the Banco do Brasil’s Previ scheme. The 1988 Constitution capped this with establishment of the Workers’ Assistance Fund (fat), now the principal contributor to the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (bndes). There is currently an attempt to attract further foreign investment with new domestic financial instruments, via the pension funds and a banking system that largely depends on transactions involving government bonds. Ultimately, such dependence on external capital flows can only deepen the crisis of peripheral neoliberalism. As Cardoso himself, on whose watch the national debt multiplied tenfold, has put it, It is not the government that controls the debt, but the debt that controls the government. The policy of external financing leads to an exponential increase in the debt burden, hamstringing the accumulation of capital. It also functions as a powerful mechanism for the concentration of income in the financial system. Banks’ profits have risen to staggering new heights under the Workers Party government.

The consequence of such policies are social formations that de Oliveira has described as a duck-billed platypus, a creature that combines external dependency with casualized labour, truncated accumulation with an unremittingly inegalitarian social order. According to de Oliveira, the most conspicuous feature of this order is the creation of a new social class, defined by its access to and control over public funds.

There is therefore an urgency to an effort to move beyond an examination of social movements created by indigenous people, campesinos and the jobless, and their relationship to leftist electoral parties, as so compellingly profiled by Dangl, to others more centrally located in the process of capitalist accumulation in South America. I say more centrally located, because they are workers, whether formal or informal, who directly faciliate the process of truncated capital accumulation referenced by de Oliveira, whereas those emphasized by Dangl constitute its detritus, useful to the current economic order only if they can be reconstituted in a form rendering them subject to the accumulation process.

Similarly, such an examination in Argentina, where Dangl posits the desultory interaction between social movements, such as the jobless piqueteros, the middle class and the government as an explanation for the demobilization of social movements since the economic collapse of late 2001 and early 2002, might provide further insight as well. It might partially explain why Kirchner was able to reconstruct capitalism in Argentina as he has acknowledged.

Beyond clarifying current social conditions in Brazil and Argentina, it could also make a strong contribution to Dangl's effort to show how the practices of South American social movements can be effectively utilized by people in the US, as he has done in relation to the Republic Windows and Doors occupation, successful efforts to reverse the privatization of municipal water systems and the Take Back the Land Movement in south Florida, where homeless people seize empty, foreclosed properties for their homes. In any event, the proletariat, even in its currently disorganized condition, is likely to play a major, possibly decisive role, in deciding the future of the South American left, despite its premature dismissal by Chavez.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Bolivia, Book Reviews, Neoliberalism, South America, Venezuela

Andrey Platonov lived much of his life in the USSR during the Leninist and Stalinist periods, but his novels, short stories, plays and film scripts only became known, in the form that he had written them, after it no longer existed. New English translations of them continue to filter out into the marketplace, such as the New York Review Books release of The Foundation Pit last year. He has been celebrated as a allegorical, spiritual voice of the absurdities and horrors of Stalinism.

Without question, Platonov was a very fine writer, but we should be careful about incorporating his work into an American anti-communist perspective, least we lose sight of his actual accomplishments. In The Foundation Pit, a short, 150 page novella, he relates the brutalities of the collectivization of agriculture in seemingly surreal fashion. But, as two of the translators, Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson, remind us: This impression is, however, misleading; they contain barely an incident or passage of dialogue that does not directly relate to some real event or publication from these years.

Hence, in the broadest possible sense, Platonov appropriates them to create his own deformed language so as to reveal the depraved social relations that accompanied collectivization. Furthermore, according to Chandler and Meerson, he had been heavily influenced by 19th and early 20th Century Russian Orthodox religious philosophers, leading him to conclude that communism should not aspire to eliminate religious faith, but rather, to improve upon it: Many of us think that it is possible to take faith away without giving people anything better. The soul of contemporary man is organized in such a way that if faith is removed from it, it will be completely overturned.

In The Foundation Pit, Platonov examines the catastrophic consequences of the failure of the Bolshevik Revolution to provide what he described as more than religion to substitute for the Christian faith that it sought to subordinate to the state, resulting in what he characterized as the end of the socialist generation. The narrative itself is fairly simple: a thirty year old man, Voshchev, is discharged from his workplace, and wanders off into the countryside, where he comes across a group of workers in another town. They have been assigned to dig out a foundation pit for a new proletarian home envisioned by by Prushevsky, an architect. He joins them, and encounters a number of characters symbolically associated with the first Five Year Plan. In the latter part of the novel, he travels with several of them, and participates in the forced collectivization of a nearby village.

One of the great paradoxes of the novel is that the collectivization of the peasantry is facilitated by their practice of Russian Orthodox religious rituals. A group of peasants designated as kulaks accomodate themselves to their fate by their communal expression of farewell to those who sent them away, while those who remain consecrate their abandonment of their homes and their entry into the collective through behaviour consistent with the rite of Forgiveness Sunday. Of course, it goes without saying that the action of pauperizing one's self for the general good is a profoundly Christian act. More generally, the authors of the directives for the implementation of collectivization insist that enthusiasm is the essential attribute for the undertaking, a religious state as opposed to a material one. Even the activist responsible for the collectivization of the village cannot avoid memorializing it in reports that take on a distinctly religious tone. Platonov recognized that the utopianism responsible for the atrocities of collectivization required a perversion of spiritual as well as material aspirations.

Meanwhile, the proletariat, as manifest in the menagerie of characters involved in the digging of the pit, is in perpetual movement without making any progress anywhere, except towards death, and, indeed, those who embrace their proletarian identity have a higher mortality rate than those who do not. Here, Platonov hints at the heresy of Cherkazov, among others, namely that the proletariat is a creation of the bourgeoisie. One can therefore construe the collectivization process imposed upon the peasantry by the proletariat in The Foundation Pit as a bourgeois one, which sounds implausible, until one recalls that, according to James Scott, US capitalists took a great interest in Soviet collectivization because of the economies of scale that they thought could be obtained through the application of industrial processes to agriculture.

There is a contemporary resonance to the narrative as well. The proponents of collectivization proceed, with a religious fervor already described, to force the peasantry to sever themselves from all reassuring bonds of their former lives, their small plots, their homes, their livestock, their Christian religion, and, in some instances, even their relatives, if the relatives had been found to be kulaks. Upon doing so, the peasants then adopted a relatively more atomized existence within the collective farm. Platonov leaves it to the reader to speculate as to their survival in such stark conditions.

If this sounds familiar, it should. It is precisely what has happened in much of the lesser developed world in the last 40 years, where indigenous peoples have been compelled, through lesser degrees of coercion and violence, to leave their villages and live as either poorly paid industrial workers or participants in the informal sector. Much like the party members of the early Stalinist period, the contemporary proponents of this social transformation have rationalized it in similarly messianic terms (most obviously, Thatcher and Reagan, but also Friedman's conflation of freedom with market participation.) Ultimately, Platonov cautions us against the extremism inherent in all involuntary modernization projects. It has fallen to those on the anti-authoritarian left in South America and elsewhere to organize a resistance centered around the family, the community and even a religious cosmology, as Raul Zibechi has observed in relation the Aymara people in Bolivia.

Labels: Bolivia, Book Reviews, Communism, Marxism, Neoliberalism, Religion, Russia, South America

Somebody gets it:

Thus, if you're committed to human emancipation, if you're committed to radically rethinking economic and social organization, Trotsky's worry is that you cannot accomplish this within the parameters of parliamentary procedures under capitalism.

Here's the argument for why this might be the case. Holders of economic power can make use of this power outside of the electoral arena. Capitalists can make threats. They lay off politically active workers that are 'trouble makers', they can move their operations to other places, they can close factories, they can threaten democratically-elected governments with disinvestment, layoffs, etc. They may purchase and privately control and own media institutions. Economic power is not relinquished without a fight. And even when regulations and limits are imposed upon capitalists, they will relentlessly deploy their economic power to game the system and find ways to get the limits and regulations repealed. Witness the slicing and dicing of the regulatory apparatus put in place in the 1930s over the period from 1973-present. It took a while, but their incessant pressure and efforts eventually paid off.

It is also crucial to point out here that the struggle to reconfigure economic power via electoral institutions never occurs on a level, fair playing field. This struggle always occurs within a social formation already organized around concentrations of class power. Moreover, even when a progressive left-wing government is elected, it runs up against the entrenched extra-electoral power of capitalists. An instructive case study here is socialist head of state Salvador Allende in Chile circa 1970-73.

Allende was elected by a broad coalition of center-left and left-wing parties in Chile amidst uproar from the landed elites and ruling classes in Chile. When Allende tried to reform economic institutions and put land reform into law, his efforts were stonewalled and sabotaged by economic elites who used their power to "go on strike", lay off workers, suffocate the economy and try to bring the country to its knees.

Multinational corporations in Chile such as the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT) set to work quickly to fight against Allende, and they weren't interested in trying to win the battle over electoral terms (a battle, the company's owners realized, they'd have little way of winning in the face of a broad popular mandate for Allende's policies). We now know from memos circulated amongst elites in ITT and the American-owned Kennecott Copper Company that their goals were to "“to strangle the Chilean economy, sow panic, and foment social disorder in order to encourage and create the opportunity for the armed forces to step in and replace Allende". Also- their influence convinced the US and related institutions like the World Bank to impose an economic blockade on Chile to help the destabilization effort.

The point of this is that all of these efforts were effective against a democratically-elected representative government precisely because of the concentrations of economic power under capitalism. Admittedly, "dictatorship" somewhat overstates the case, but the Allende case makes the point that this stranglehold on productive, economic power by a small class must be challenged for democracy to be possible.

Faced with this problem, Obama has responded by turning his economic policy over to Wall Street, his foreign policy over to the Pentagon and his health care program to pharmaceutical and health insurance companies. Confronted with the same challenge in Venezuela, Chavez persuaded the populace to change the constitution and distributed the benefits of the country's oil wealth throughout the society, provoking an unsuccessful 2002 coup and a 2004 recall referendum. Evo Morales has pursued a similar approach in Bolivia. Chavez has won numerous elections in Venezuela with substantial pluralities (all greater than the margin of Obama's 2008 victory), and Morales recently won reelection with a nearly 2 to 1 margin. Both rose to power with the assistance of social movements that challenged the existing political structure by giving expression to the grievances of marginalized people.

Chavez and Morales are, it seems, bent upon proving Trotsky wrong (and, by extension, his nemesis, Kautsky, the turn of the century German Social Democrat who advocated socialism by recourse to parliamentary democracy, correct), while Obama, consistent with Trotsky's analysis, but contrary to his intention, has adopted a strategy of pragmatic accommodation with the dominance of capital within the US political system. LIke DeGaulle, both Chavez and Morales will eventually confront the dilemma of their succession, and the survival of a political movement reliant upon charismatic leadership, no matter how long they delay it. Conversely, just as Obama has carried out a seamless transition of many of the policies of the Bush presidency into his own, so will his successor. While, unlike Chavez and Morales, there is a limit upon how many terms Obama can serve, there are no such limits upon the capital friendly policies that have characterized his presidency to date.

Labels: American Empire, Anarchism, Barack Obama, Bolivia, Elections, Hugo Chavez, Marxism, Neoliberalism, Vote or Die

From the Associated Press:

Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program, according to a secret Israeli government report obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran’s nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.

“There are reports that Venezuela supplies Iran with uranium for its nuclear program,” the Foreign Ministry document states, referring to previous Israeli intelligence conclusions.

It added, “Bolivia also supplies uranium to Iran.”

The report did not say where the uranium was from.

There was no immediate comment from officials in Venezuela or Bolivia about the report.

Perhaps, Israel can launch airstrikes against them, too, expanding any war with Iran to South America as well. All in all, it sounds remarkably similar to the Niger forgeries, documents leaked by Italian intelligence in 2002 that purportedly established that Iraq had been attempting to purchase processed uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons development.

By way of background, there is a strong belief among Venezuela leftists and some in the military that Israel was involved in the 2002 unsuccessful coup attempt against Chavez. I was also told during my trip to Venezuela in 2005 that Chavez, sometime after taking office in 1998, removed a number of Israeli operatives providing unspecified services to the Venezuela military and intelligence services. He did it because he believed that they were using these positions to gather information that could be used against him. Recently, Chavez ordered the removal of the Israeli ambassador in Caracas in protest against the assault upon the civilian populace of Gaza.

One should not dimiss the possibility that the hostility towards Israel within Venezuela is coloured by a residue of anti-semitism directed towards Jews generally. Even so, Chavez apparently had good reason to be concerned. After all, Israel supported Somoza in Nicaragua, and subsequently provided military assistance to the contras. Not surprisingly, Israel also provided provided military assistance to El Salvador and Guatemala in their armed struggles with the left during this same period. In the case of Guatemala, Israel assisted the government's brutal campaign of near extermination against its indigenous populace when the US was legally prohibited from doing so. And, as you might have guessed, Israel had good relations with Pinochet in Chile as well, selling weapons to him, despite his flirtation with a notorious neo-Nazi sect.

Closer to home, at least from a Venezuelan perspective, Israel has supplied weapons to Colombian paramilitaries since the 1980s, and continues to do so. Similarly, Israel participated in the dirty war in Argentina. Chavez, and the left throughout South America, understand what many in the US do not, that Israel has been an implacable enemy of leftist movements in South America, violent or non-violent, for decades. Furthermore, it has provided material assistance in their violent suppression by rightist governments and social movements. Such a history lends credibility to the belief of some Venezuelans that Israel, through the Mossad, was involved in the 2002 coup. No doubt the Bolivians are aware of this history as well, and wary about Israeli involvement in their country.

But are Venezuela and Bolivia supplying Iran with uranium? Hard to say, although the report comes across as embarrassingly propagandistic. The Associated Press article states that Venezuela has undertaken no action to mine its estimated uranium reserves, while Bolivia does so. It is, of course, possible that Venezuela is involved in the delivery of Bolivian uranium to Iran. If so, what is the significance? Is it illegal for them to do so? Of course, it is common for countries to sell uranium to other countries for use in nuclear power generation facilities, as Australian does in relation to China, and Russia now does in relation to the US. If Iran is merely involved in the development of nuclear power, consistent with the most recent National Intelligence Estimate and the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency, one would assume that such purchases, if they ever happened, transgress no international laws. Oh, by the way, did I forget to mention that the report also claims that Venezuela is also a Hizbullah sanctuary?

Labels: American Empire, Bolivia, Israel, Neoliberalism, South America, Venezuela, War with Iran

. . . . if Morales is removed by a coup.

Labels: American Empire, Bolivia, Hugo Chavez, Neoliberalism, Political Violence, Venezuela

Bolivia has become the front line of conflict between the United States and the leftist regimes of South America:

After registering astonishing levels of support in the referendum, the MAS government declared that it was going to bring forward for popular referendum the draft of a new constitution approved by the Constituent Assembly in Oruro several months ago.

In celebration, indigenous peasant and working-class supporters of the government set off on August 29 for a peaceful march to the Plaza 24 de Septiembre, in the centre of the city of Santa Cruz. A gathering of autonomists, organized in part by the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (Cruceño Youth Union, UJC), were there to greet them.

According to the mainstream daily La Prensa, one UJC speaker at the autonomist rally declared: “We are not going to permit [the entrance of the masistas] into the Plaza. When we go to their communities, they treat us like dogs. We want independence. We don’t want this damned race in our territory.” Other chants and phrases used that day, according to the vociferously anti-Morales La Razón newspaper, included: “shitty collas,” (colla is a racial epithet used in Santa Cruz to refer to indigenous people from the western highlands), and, “Indians return to your lands.”

After the speeches, the racists when on a rampage against the unarmed trade unionists and peasants, as well as any visibly indigenous person in proximity of the plaza. Indigenous women wearing the traditional pollera, or gathered skirt, were particularly vulnerable to beatings and racist taunts. One autonomist youth leader, Amelia Dimitri, was captured in video footage and photographs whipping an indigenous woman wearing a pollera. This occurred immediately after Dimitri addressed the crowd of autonomist thugs in a rousing speech. She’s only the latest face of hatred on the autonomist right.

On national television, Bolivians watched as racist teenagers wielded clubs, whips, and two-by-fours against unarmed indigenous workers and peasants. Images of men and women with broken noses and shirts literally drenched in blood quickly made their way to You Tube, private and national state media, and the front pages of the local newspapers. These are the “democracy supporters” supported by imperialism against the “dictatorship” of Evo Morales.

But where were the cops? Where was the military? The MAS government refused to act, calling instead for negotiations.

And in the following weeks things intensified further, such that in the last two days Bolivia has been perched on a precipice, below which lies the defeat of left-indigenous power – on the rise since the wave of insurrections between 2000 and 2005 – and the conquest of power by imperialism and the rich and the white-mestizo elite who have long-ruled the country, and who retain control of economic power despite Morales’ electoral victory.

Not surprisingly, the US ambassador has expressed sympathy for the demands of the elite. In response, President Evo Morales has ordered him to leave the country:

President Evo Morales said Wednesday that he is expelling the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia for allegedly inciting violent opposition protests.

Morales' announcement came hours after his government said a pipeline blast triggered by saboteurs forced the country to cut natural gas exports to Brazil by 10 percent.

"Without fear of the empire, I declare the U.S. ambassador 'persona non grata,'" Morales said in a speech at the presidential palace. He said he asked his foreign minister to send a diplomatic note to Ambassador Philip Goldberg telling the American to go home.

"We don't want separatists, divisionists," Bolivia's leftist president added.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid called the accusation "baseless" and said the U.S. government had not yet received a note about the ambassador.

Now, this morning, we learn that rightists have killed seven peasants in Santa Cruz province:

At least eight people were killed as violent anti-government protests flared in Bolivia Thursday, creating havoc in the natural gas industry and raising tensions with the United States.

Washington ordered out the Bolivian ambassador in response to Bolivia's move a day earlier to oust the U.S. envoy whom President Evo Morales blamed for the escalating violence.

Opposition activists shot dead seven peasant farmers in the remote Amazon region of Pando, a government official said, describing the incident as a massacre. An employee of the opposition-led regional government was also killed.

"We're talking about a real massacre and the person responsible is the Pando governor," said Deputy Minister of Social Movements Sacha Llorenti.

Morales' leftist government blames the unrest on rightist governors who control four of the impoverished country's nine regions.

The opposition demands greater autonomy and energy revenue and opposes plans by Morales, a former coca farmer and Bolivia's first indigenous president, to rewrite the constitution and distribute land to the poor.

Clashes also erupted in Tarija, a region rich in natural gas, and anti-Morales demonstrators occupied public buildings in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, an opposition stronghold, for a third day.

As this article indicates, the escalating conflict is centered around control of Bolivia's resources, with the white mestizo elite, supported by the US, resorting to violence in an attempt to overturn the referendum result in favor of Morales. It is reminiscent of the shutdown of the Venezuelan state owned oil industry by the oil workers union in late 2002 and early 2003 in an effort to prevent Chavez from using industry profits to fund social programs. It is, of course, also frighteningly reminscent of US covert operations within Chile in the period leading to the military coup in 1973.

The most disturbing aspects of the deteriorating situation in Bolivia are the extent to which the US is supporting violence that has crossed the threshold into death squad activity, as well as the enthusiastic expression of racism against indigenous people as means of inciting a rebellion. No doubt, we will soon hear someone from the State Department blame the government for the deaths and injuries inflicted upon the indigenous communities of the country, much as they blame Iraqi and Afghan insurgents for the deaths of civilians caused by US military operations in their countries.

While bigotry towards indigenous people and the poor more generally have also been important aspects of the opposition to Chavez in Venezuela, I don't recall that it has ever been expressed this crudely, this violently, on a mass basis. US policy in Bolivia, and, to a lesser degree in Venezuela, is taking on more and more of the features of white supremacy. If the rightists prevail, the prospect of out of control, indiscriminate killings of indigenous people looks very plausible, with the country spiraling into an irreversible cycle of violence similar to the one that plagues Colombia.

Morales appears to be hesitating to use force against the secessionists because it could provide a justification for US intervention. But it doesn't look he has any choice. The Bush administration is bent upon settling old scores before leaving office, as also indicated by the intensification of hostility between the US and Chavez in Venezuela as well, or, at least, leaving behind a policy of confrontation that will be difficult for Obama to change if he becomes President, assuming, of course, that he would even have the inclination to do so.

More abstractly, US elites may have also decided that there is an urgency for a more blatant policy of seizing control over hydrocarbon and mineral resources around the world in light of the ongoing collapse of the financial system. Unable and unwilling to obtain these resources at the market rate, they may have concluded that the implementation of a neo-mercantile policy through local surrogates, like the elites in Santa Cruz province, for example, is required. While the market remains, the empowerment of such elites by the US provides it with a means to manipulate the market to its advantage that it no longer possesses. Speculative musings, no doubt, but ones that may lead to a clearer understanding of the situation with the passage of time.

Labels: American Empire, Bolivia, Hugo Chavez, Neoliberalism, Political Violence, Racism, Venezuela

Subsequent social movements in South America abandoned his foco based approach to igniting revolutions throughout the region, as well as the Soviet inspired centralized state socialism adopted by Cuba, but they revere him as someone who kept alive the hope, no matter how dark the horizon, that American imposed neoliberal policies could be successfully resisted.

Back in his day, of course, he described it as straightforward imperialism, but no matter, the subsequent substitution of the symptom, neoliberalism, for the disease, imperialism, has merely sharpened the understanding of the nature of the conflict. Hence, in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Brazil, in Argentina, indeed, throughout the continent, he retains his mythic stature, even after the leftists inspired by him put down their arms, and embarked upon a generational effort to build a social alternative from the ground up, an effort that required the most intense faith to be sustained, because, after all, how could they be sure that decades of activism, of relatively non-violent confrontation with the state, its affiliated labor unions and paramilitaries, would come to fruition?

But it did. As with any transformation, the results are uneven, with success in Venezuela, enthusiasm in Bolivia, increasing cynicism in Brazil, and an anti-capitalist, non-hierarchical social movement struggling to survive in Argentina. Thus, the incongruity of Chavez and Morales, two men who achieved power non-violently through democratic means because of the failure of structural adjustment policies, sharing murals with Che, the man who walked out of the party bureaucracy and into the jungle to arm the peasants for the coming revolution.

Che failed, but it was a failure that educated others about what was necessary to ultimately prevail. He was consistently and unabashedly with the victims of US imperialism, even though his methods of armed resistance and bureaucratic socialism were repudiated. Chavez, Morales and millions of others understandably identify with Che for this reason, as they are likewise irrevocably aligned with the impoverished and exploited of their countries, recognizing the great debt they owe him for educating them about the difficulties of confronting global capitalism.

Labels: Activism, Bolivarian Revolution, Bolivia, Political Violence

As noted last December, AK Press is a remarkably inventive publisher of radical books. Known for its anarchism, it emphasizes the release of works by people with first hand experience of social movements, resulting in a relatively unmediated and refreshingly non-academic presentation. It aspires to the ambition of relating the histories of the present day that the corporate, globalized media ignores, while simultaneously excavating the buried experiences of marginalized peoples of the past.

In February, it published Benjamin Dangl's, The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia. The book is a triumph in every respect. Technically, Dangl is one of those rarities, a writer blessed with the gift of the economical use of language, capable of skillfully interweaving abstract theory, political and social history and the personal experiences of the people who have lived and transcended it. He is thorough, but not boring, colorful, without reducing his subjects to the level of vicarious objects for the benefit of literary tourism.

For Dangl, The Price of Fire describes the cost of access to the basic elements of human survival, which in Bolivia means gas, water, land, coca, employment and other resources, and it is this struggle, a struggle that has persisted for centuries, that explains what has recently transpired in Bolivia. Ruthlessly abused by the feudal Spanish, neglected by the liberal nationalism of the late 19th and 20th Centuries, and, finally, relegated to the shadows as irrelevant and dispensable because of their inability to participate in the credit and consumer economy of neoliberalism, the indigenous majority of Bolivia faced cultural extinction.

But something quite incredible occurred, truly incredible, given the small size of Bolivia in terms of territory and population. Instead of allowing themselves to be atomized, separated from one another in a Hobbesian world of subsistence, they fought back, drawing upon a tradition of collective action and creative social organization. Faced with the prospect of perpetual repression by the US financed paramilitary War on Drugs, the loss of communal water supplies to multinational corporations, grinding poverty as consequence of the implementation of IMF structural adjustment plans and the extraction of their hydrocarbon wealth, such as natural gas, without little, if any tangible benefit, they rebelled.

Dangl has spent a lot of time in Bolivia, often during many of the protests against these policies imposed by the US for the benefit of transnationals, the Pentagon and private military contractors, and his experiences, and especially those of the people that he interviewed, infuse the book with an intimacy normally associated with oral history. His subjects, coca farmers, shantytown residents, urban police officers, students and the deindustrialized proletariat describe the inhumanity of neoliberalism in terms of their day to day life, explaining how resistance became the only means of survival available to them.

Readers therefore understand seminal events like the Cochambamba Water War in 2000 and the Gas War of 2003 through the voices of the participants themselves. Along with the burgeoning movement in support of coca production, they brought down a succession of neoliberal governments, paving the way for the political victory of Evo Morales in 2005.

For Americans, Dangl's examination of the culturally essential role of coca in the lives of the people of Bolivia is especially enlightening. Beyond its medicinal value and the ability of indigenous people to make a subsistence living from its harvest and sale, it provided a refuge for people who lost jobs in more conventional agriculture and the mining sector. As one woman told Dangl: I produce coca for my children, because if I die tomorrow they will be able to continue to eat thanks to this bit of coca.

If there is a thread that runs throughout, it is the ability of Bolivians to organize communally. Coca growers formed unions, and participated in numerous road blockades and protests to defend themselves against the US mandated paramilitary eradication effort. Migrants to the high altitude, impoverished city of El Alto, many of them miners and farmers, like their brethren who survived by growing coca, brought their methods of social organization with them, creating a sense of solidarity through unions and neighborhood councils that enabled them to construct their communities and govern themselves.

As one miner who lost his job in the 1980s explained: When we came to El Alto from Potosi, all the miners put their money together to buy land . . We knew how to demand things and how to organize. We knew how to work together. That's how we got things like water quickly. We had to use our own tools, buy our own cement, everything. The state wasn't around at that time. I had the luck to have 25 companeros from the mines there with me. It's our neighborhood, we made it . . Even today we don't have help from the state.

Inevitably, the participants in such forms of communal organization, which evoke the mutual aid philosophy of anarchism, were going to come into conflict with the state. They prevailed, it seems, because, while they were being victimized by neoliberal social policies, these very same policies were simultaneously eroding the effectiveness of the state's instruments of social control. Such policies also rendered them literally expendable, as there was no role for them in the Bolivian economy other than on the margins within the informal sector as vendors or as coca growers and sellers. They were not being subjected to the workplace oppression of 19th Century capitalism, but rather, treated as the refuse of a credit oriented consumer society from which they were necessarily excluded for insufficient funds.

It is hard not to contrast the communal life of many Bolivians with the atomized individuality of the US. How would we respond if confronted with the hardship suffered by Bolivians in recent decades? Would we recover our history of collective direct action and save ourselves, or would we be overwhelmed by the forces of international finance capital? Would we join together, or turn upon one another? So far, the apparent answers are not encouraging, but then, people have a way of surprising you when they recognize that the struggle can no longer be avoided.

Labels: Activism, AK Press, Anarchism, Bolivia, Book Reviews, Neoliberalism

From the Financial Times:

Future supplies of oil from Latin America are at risk because of the spread of resource nationalism, a study by the US military that reflects growing concerns in the US administration over energy security has found.

An internal report prepared by the US military’s Southern Command and obtained by the Financial Times follows a recent US congressional investigation that warned of the US’s vulnerability to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s repeated threats to “cut off” oil shipments to the US. The Southern Command analysis cautions that the extension of state control over energy production in several countries is deterring investment essential to increase and sustain oil output in the long term.

“A re-emergence of state control in the energy sector will likely increase inefficiencies and, beyond an increase in short-term profits, will hamper efforts to increase long-term supplies and production,” the report said. So far this year, Venezuela has moved to double the level of taxes levied on oil production units operated by multinationals, Bolivia has nationalised its oil and gas fields, and Ecuador has seized several oilfields from Occidental Petroleum, the largest foreign oil company in the country.

The report also noted that oil production in Mexico, which faces elections next weekend, is stagnating because of constitutional restrictions on foreign investment.

This is a fascinating story, because it suggests that the US military is adopting the doctrine that a rejection of neoliberal economic policies, as in Venezuela and Bolivia, constitutes a threat to the US justifying military action, especially when it involves oil and natural gas production.

Otherwise, why would the Southern Command be undertaking studies of Venezuelan tax policy, Bolivian nationalization and Ecuadorian oil field seizures? In 1942, the Wehrmacht felt compelled to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus. Does the US military perceive a similar urgency when it comes to the oil and natural gas of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and, the great unmentionable . . Iran? And, if so, to what extent has the loss of the war in Iraq, and the inability to open Iraqi oil fields to US investment and exploitation, accelerated this sense of urgency?

Finally, as an aside, observe that the article references the military's concern that Chavez has threatened to stop oil exports to the US, without clarifying that Chavez has consistently conditioned such threats upon a US military attack. If Chavez was inclined to stop exports because of policy differences with the US, he has certainly passed on several opportunities to do so. It is tiresome to have to repeat the obvious, but it becomes necessary when both the media and the military persist in creating the false impression that Chavez has threatened to stop oil exports for any reason other than self-defense.

Labels: Bolivarian Revolution, Bolivia, Hugo Chavez, Neoliberalism, US Military

If anyone is curious, I haven't been posting lately because I finally married my longtime partner, and spent our honeymoon in British Columbia. If you haven't been there, I highly recommend it, especially Vancouver Island and the other Gulf Islands. The weather was fabulous (incredibly, it actually rained back home in Sacramento while the sun was out at Sooke Harbour!), but, as with most places, it is best to avoid the crowds by visiting midweek if possible.

With the approach of the Memorial Day weekend, I think it best to slip back into blogging gently with some holiday reading suggestions. First, consider this excellent article by James Petras, entitled, Latin America, the EU and the US: The New Polarities. Petras, as a radical supporter of the left transformation of the Americas, has consistently subjected the social movements attempting to achieve it to rigorous analysis and accountability instead of romanticizing them.

Here's an excerpt from the article that highlights his method:

There are great many misunderstandings and confusion both on the Right and Left regarding the nature of the conflicts between Latin American nationalists and US/EU states and multinational corporations. The first point of clarification is over the nature of the nationalist measures adopted by President Chavez of Venezuela and President Morales of Bolivia. Both regimes have not abolished most of the essential elements of capitalist production, namely private profits, foreign ownership, profit repatriation, market access or supply of gas, energy or other primary goods, nor have they outlawed future foreign investments.

In fact Venezuela’s huge Orinoco heavy oil fields, the richest reserves of oil in the world, are still owned by foreign capital. The controversy over President Chavez’ radical economic measures revolves around a tax and royalty increase from less than 15% to 33% -- a rate which is still below what is paid by oil companies in Canada, the Middle East and Africa. What produced the stream of vitriolic froth from the US and British media (Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, etc) was not a comparative analysis of contemporary tax and royalty rates, but a retrospective comparison to the virtually tax-free past. In fact Chavez and Morales are merely modernizing and updating petrol-nation state relations to present world standards; in a sense they are normalizing regulatory relations in the face of exceptional or windfall profits, resulting from corrupt agreements with complicit state executive officials. The harsh reaction of the US and EU governments and their energy MNCs is a result of having become habituated to thinking that exceptional privileges were the norm of “capitalist development” rather than the result of venal officials. As a result, they resisted the normalization of capitalist relations in Venezuela and Bolivia in which state-private joint ventures and profit sharing are common practices in most capitalist countries.

It is not surprising that the president of Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, advised his oil colleagues that the nationalist position of oil rich countries and their redrawing of contracts is a “new reality” that international energy companies have to accept. Van der Veer, the realist, puts the nationalist reforms in perspective: “In Venezuela we were one of the first to renegotiate. Under the circumstances we are quite satisfied we can work our future there. We have harmony with the government, which is very important. In Bolivia, I assume we will come to a solution.” (Financial Times, May 13, 2006 page 9) Likewise Pan Andean Resources (PAR), an Irish gas and energy company, stated it could successfully operate in Bolivia following Morales’ “nationalization” declaration. David Horgan, President of PAR, in justifying a joint venture in gas with the Bolivians, stated, “We don’t really care what precedents it [PAR’s gas agreement with the Bolivian state] sets. What the majors [big oil companies] see as a problem, we see as an opportunity.” (Financial Times, May 13, 2006, p9)

In fact, in Bolivia on May 29, 2006, the Morales government will announce the winning bid to the world’s biggest private mining companies competing to exploit state-owned Mutun with 40 billion tons of iron ore. The new terms of the Bolivian government as outlined by its principle ideologue, Vice President Linera, provides judicial and stable guarantees for all investments, in exchange for profit sharing and joint management schemes. Clearly the big mining corporations are part of the “realist” school of reaping big profits from strategic high-priced raw materials in exchange for paying higher taxes and including Bolivian technocrats in their management team.

The major points of conflict are not capitalism’s aversion to socialism, nor even private ownership versus nationalization of property, let alone social revolution leading to an egalitarian society. The major conflicts are over: 1) Increases in taxation, prices and royalty payments, 2) the conversion of firms to joint ventures, 3) representation on corporate boards of directors, 4) distribution of shareholdings between foreign appointed and state-appointed executives, 5) the legal right to revise contracts, 6) compensation payments for presumed assets, and 7) management of distribution and export sales.

These proposed regulations and reforms may increase state reserves and influence but none of these points of conflict involve a revolutionary transformation of property or social relations of production. The proposed changes are reforms, which resonate with the policies undertaken by European social democratic parties between the late 1940s-1960s and by most of the world’s oil producing countries in the 1970s, including Arab monarchies and Islamic and secular republics. In fact earlier political regimes in both Venezuela (1976) and Bolivia (1952 and 1968) took far more radical measures in nationalizing petroleum and other mining sectors.

There are many other geopolitical provocations in Petras' article. Again, if you are interested in reading it in its entirely, go here.

Next, there is this fascinating piece by Iason Athanasiadis about Iranian measures to respond to an attack by the United States, Iran Oils Its War Machine, posted, of course, on the indispensable Asia Times Online site. It is wise to read such articles cynically, just as we would ones about US plans and preparations, but I must concede, they are irresistable. Is it real or is it Le Carre? Here's a passage to compel you to read further and decide:

Accordingly, Iran has been quietly restructuring its military, while carrying out a series of military exercises testing its new military dogma. In December, more than 15,000 members of the regular armed forces participated in war games in northwestern Iran's strategically sensitive East Azerbaijan and West Azerbaijan border provinces that focused on irregular warfare carried out by highly mobile and speedy army units.

In another telling development, a second exercise was launched in the majority-Arab province of Khuzestan, reportedly aimed at quelling insurgencies in areas subject to ethnic unrest and prone to foreign influence. Involving 100,000 troops, the exercise provided a taste of how the Islamic Republic would respond to further disturbances in the strategic, oil-rich province.

The exercise came on the heels of news that the irregular Basij forces that led Iran's offensives against Iraq were being bolstered by so-called Ashura battalions with riot-control training.

It is all part of a fundamental transition that Iran's Revolutionary Guard (RG) is undergoing as it moves away from focusing on waging its defense of the country on the borders - unrealistic in view of the vast territory that requires securing and the gulf separating Iranian and US military capabilities - and toward drawing the enemy into the heartland and defeating it with asymmetrical tactics.

Finally, there is the much maligned Pat Buchanan, who yet again proves, in a column entitled, Steering into a Third Intifida, that his personal bigotries do not impair his ability to recognize the perilous consequences of US foreign policy, in this instance, the abandonment of the Palestinians to the imperial aspirations of Israel in Jerusalem and the West Bank:

The West Bank wall will soon encompass all of the suburbs of Jerusalem for miles around. Palestine will be divided into three parts: Gaza and two enclaves on the West Bank. There will be no Palestinian official presence in Jerusalem. No viable nation.

Meanwhile, America will be called upon for new sums of money to subsidize the Sharon-Olmert Plan, even as we are prodded to do our duty and emasculate Iran.

As Olmert is the pilot setting the course, and Bush has signed on as crew to his "bold ideas," our destination is easy to foresee.

The United States alone will recognize Israel's new borders, and her annexations of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem as Israel's exclusive capital. Israel will ask for and the United States will accede to Israel's request that we commit ourselves militarily to defend Israel's new frontiers. No Arab government will recognize the new borders. America's Arab friends will be further estranged.

For more, especially Buchanan's concluding prediction as to the outcome, written in his inimitable style, go here. Don't hesitate to post your own holiday reading recommendations.

Labels: American Empire, Bolivarian Revolution, Bolivia, Israel, Palestine, Pat Buchanan, War with Iran