bolivia: the working class and the morales government

Bolivia’s trade unions are increasingly being incorporated into the state, but some sections of the labour movement are arguing for the re-affirmation of the historic goals of the working class and reclaiming the political indepedence of the unions faced with Evo Morales’ MAS government and the right.

by Enrique Ormachea

Since its foundation, the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB – Bolivia’s main trade union federation) has incorporated into its political principles the central points of the Pulacayo Thesis, including the political independence of trade union organizations. Today, the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) government of Evo Morales is trying to take absolute control of the union leaderships, with the objective of converting them into feeble bodies which cover for his ever more blatantly anti-working class and anti-peasant policies.

Much of the trade union leadership has been developing policies openly contrary to the principles of political independence upheld by Bolivian trade unionism, acting against even the resolutions of the last COB Congress.

an unfinished revolution in ukraine

We present here a translation of an article by a member of the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists, a group based in Russia.  The article describes the political content of the Orange Revolution and its meaning today, in the context of economic crisis and the decline of the imperial power of the United States.

The 4^th anniversary of the Orange Revolution has been marked by yet another clash within the camp of its victors, and presents a good opportunity to debate the merits of this “revolution”.  Its most noteworthy aspect is its dismal confinement to bourgeois character in a time of degenerating capitalism, when a bourgeois revolution has no capacity to solve any social problems.

2008 : The spectre of Karl Marx returned.

From the Commune, May 2009, a view presented at the outset of the Great Recession.

 

In January 2007, the Financial Times, declared that emerging market economies would continue to power ahead. Capitalism was triumphant. The ghost of Karl Marx had been laid to rest. But then just when the progress of the unfettered market appeared unstoppable it spectacularly crashed.  Some of the world’s biggest banks collapsed. The housing and credit bubble burst. In September 2008, Northern Rock in Britain and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the USA were rescued by governments with huge sums of tax payers money. The Bradford and Bingley building society was salvaged by the state and the Lehman Brothers financial empire fell to the ground. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the federal bank, in the USA, confessed that his free market confidence in the self-interest of bankers had been wrong. (1)

Bourgeois politicians were forced to eat their words and stand on their heads. The mantra of government economic intervention bad, free markets good, heard for over two decades was replaced by nationalization of banks and government bailouts for failing capitalists and capitalism. In October 2008 the New Labour government, a champion of the free market for a decade, bailed out leading banks with £50 billion. This was only the first bailout. Another bailout followed only months later. The Neo-Liberal free market melt down was so shocking that The Times carried a portrait of Karl Marx with the words: ‘he is back’. (2)

 

report: occupation at london metropolitan university

by David Broder

At 4pm on the afternoon of Monday 11th May around thirty students began an occupation of the sixth floor canteen at the London Met building on Commercial Road in protest at sweeping cuts. Management plan to get rid of 550 posts – some 800 members of staff, one quarter of the indebted university – which will mean severe cutbacks in several subjects, such as the arts and languages.

UCU members had staged strike action last Thursday (7th May) and although taken by surprise by the student action, several lecturers have joined the occupation. As yet management have refused to talk to the occupiers, but there seems to be strong solidarity between students, lecturers and other staff organised by UNISON, with course cuts and reduced student services the obvious outcome of attacks on the university workforce.

The nursery, key to allowing students with kids to attend London Met, as well as all but two of the libraries are also due to be slashed in order to make up for a purported £15 million budget deficit.

“thatcher’s children”

By an East London teacher

News of students occupying universities across the UK in protest at Israeli atrocities prompted some on the Left to proclaim young people as a new revolutionary force in Britain. This assessment is in part wishful thinking, since if it was accurate, the disproportionate amount of time the Left spends on recruiting and organising students would have some justification.

report from the commune’s second national aggregate

By Joe Thorne

A personal view – Last Saturday (9 May), members of the commune met for our second national ‘aggregate’.

As a relatively new organisation, we are organising on the basis of meetings attended by all members able to make it, held every three months.  As our organisation develops, we may develop more formal structure, but that is how it works at the moment.

where next for the unions?

by Steve Ryan

Recent events covered by The Commune such as the wild cat strikes and Visteon would indicate a surge in militancy amongst workers. However, look a bit deeper and there are real problems emerging in the trade union movement.

Both the wild cats and Visteon took the unions by surprise, but more telling was the lack of concrete support given by the union leaders and general union movement.

Also, as we sink into the deepest recession since the 30s the reaction of the TUC was to produce a booklet on how to spread your debts and write CVs!

reading for ‘conceptualising communist society’ discussion group

The next of The Commune’s London reading groups on ‘communism from below’ will take place on Monday 25th May from 7pm at the Old Red Lion, near Angel.

The title of the meeting is ‘conceptualising communist society’. The recommended reading material includes sections of two late 19th century utopian novels outlining a future communist society – Looking Backward 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy (chapters 6-7), and News from Nowhere by William Morris (chapter 14). See these chapters as a Word file here.

Bellamy’s vision of communism (read whole book here) spurned a number of so-called “Nationalist” clubs around the United States and the book was also very popular among the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. He envisages a technocratic society where the state is the sole capitalist and every worker’s abilities are used to the full.

Morris’s book (read in full here) was written as a rebuttal of Bellamy’s work, outlining a libertarian view of communism based on collective decision making, extreme democracy and personal freedom from state control.

We will be discussing the following questions:

a workers’ guide to bureaucracy

…or anyone in a movement which should be fighting but isnt

By Joe Thorne

You might have noticed that though trade unions are supposed to be workers’ organisations, they don’t always act like it.  You’ve probably noticed this first in a contrast between the energy, bravery and camaraderie of a campaigning organisation of grassroots union members at your place of work, and the general apathy, cowardice, inertia, incompetence and paternalism of higher levels of the union.  The point of this guide is to explain why something that should be so good got messed up, and what to do about it. (Also available as as a PDF.)

bolivia: the struggle for control of the unions

an Econoticias Bolivia editorial

La Paz, 30th April 2009 – the combative Bolivian working class has begun its May Day celebrations in the midst of a hard-fought struggle among the leadership of the Central Obrera Boliviana [the main union federation – COB], which has begun to fight actively as part of the ranks of the pro-indigenous government of president Evo Morales, whilst the radical miners’ and teachers’ unions are fighting to defend an independent class-struggle position and initiate a struggle over workers’ demands.

Some believe that the unions should forget, at least for the moment, the poverty and exploitation workers suffer, putting their economic and social demands on hold in order to back the indigenous government which is working to humanise capitalism and make it fairer, and which is also confronted by the oligarchy and the fascists. Others argue in reply that workers must win back their independence, putting the brakes on mounting exploitation and taking back the agenda of October [2003’s general strike], smashing the power of the oligarchy by taking over the mines, factories and agricultural estates.

victimisation of alberto einstein durango

Many readers of The Commune will know Alberto Einstein Durango, a Colombian activist who worked as a cleaner at Schroders in the City of London, has recently been involved in the Mitie/Willis dispute and also spoke at a recent public meeting of ours.

Yesterday morning after attending a construction workers’ demo at the Olympic stadium site he was called to a meeting at his employer, the cleaning contractor Lancaster, at 9.15am, under the pretense that he was due to be offered new work. Upon arrival he was met by four policemen, and arrested on suspicion of working under a false name (i.e. without appropriate papers).

The police took Alberto in handcuffs to his house, questioning him on why he had socialist papers in his bags (he had picked up several at the demo…). He also had a DVD concerning the Tamil struggle about his person (having been given a free copy at a meeting) and the police remarked upon his possession of “terrorist” propaganda. All these materials were confiscated and his house searched before he was taken to Peckham police station.

rob williams sacked – step up the struggle

Rob Williams, trade union Convenor of Linamar Swansea and vice chair of the National Shop Stewards’ Network, was sacked by the Linamar management last week, and then temporarily re-instated following militant action by the Linamar workforce.

Disgracefully, however, Rob today had his sacking confirmed. Negotiations between Linamar management and Tony Woodley took place all day in London, but Linamar did not shift.

the struggle at visteon, the union and the development of class consciousness

By Joe Thorne

Since my first visit to the former Visteon factory in Enfield, North London, much has changed.  Following a threat to picket out the Bridgend engine plant, Ford has apparently conceded a full 52 weeks of redundancy pay – though, as we shall see, what has really been conceded is unclear.  Workers at the Enfield and Basildon factories voted to accept the ‘offer’ on 1^st May, International Workers Day; one month after they had occupied the plant on April Fools.  On the day of my most recent visit (Sunday 3.5.09) we heard that Belfast had voted acceptance, in their case by 147-34.

report on ‘strangers into citizens’ demonstration

by David Broder

Today several thousand people marched from Elephant & Castle and Westminster to London’s Trafalgar Square in a demonstration calling for the regularisation of undocumented immigrants.

The organisers of the march, London Citizens, have an extremely conservative stance similar to that of Mayor Boris Johnson, commenting on their website that they have been “calling for the Government to implement a one-off regularisation measure that would allow refused asylum seekers and visa overstayers who have put down roots in Britain to become legal. Campaigners argue that strict conditions – residence of at least four years followed by a two-year “pathway” period, a clean criminal record, good English, character references, etc. – should be applied.”

However, others on the march argued that immigrants should not only be let stay because of “good behaviour” or because they are hard-working (i.e. making a business case for exploiting migrants) but rather because everyone has a right to settle where they please.