I posted my comments/questions here before I had the opportunity to read the Fuentes piece which did a lot to clarify the critical and secondary issues in the debate.

Some specifics: the strength of this post is that it helps set the record straight on what Morales and MAS have achieved (i.e. not reconstituting neoliberalism) but I think the weakness of it is that there is no discussion of what shortcomings there are or what mistakes have been made by Morales and MAS, if any.

My major disagreement is with the argument that “[t]he greatest barrier to a socialist overturn in Bolivia is not the Morales leadership but the absence of workers’ governments in economically advanced countries that could provide effective support.” As I argued previously before, the greatest barrier to a socialist revolution in Bolivia isn’t Morales/MAS but the political consciousness of the country’s workers, peasants, and poor people, the overwhelming majority of whom see Morales as their president and the Bolivian government as theirs, rightly or wrongly. The lack of workers’ states in the imperialist countries is not one of the main roadblocks to the socialist transformation, which brings me to my next point.

You are absolutely right that workers will not become convinced of the need to overthrow the capitalist state if the road to reform remains open and that the struggle for reforms and/or to overthrow the system are part of a single process of class struggle. The rigid juxtaposition of the two is one of the mistakes that Webber seems to make, which leads him to denounce Morales for selling out, betraying, reconstituting, demobilizing, containing, etc. and in so doing, the dynamic process of the Bolivian revolution is reduced to the “crisis of the revolutionary leadership” i.e. the lack of a revolutionary party.

You are also right that even under a workers’ state there will be conflicts with groups of workers, although I don’t think the comparison is appropriate given that Bolivia remains capitalist and its government a capitalist state even though reformists (MAS, etc.) stand at the head of it, not to mention the thorny issue of shooting workers under a workers’ state in the midst of a brutal and debilitating civil war. My question about the strike was based on a cursory reading of one of Webber’s pieces and was formulated in a very one-sided way. I shouldn’t have even posed it without reading more about the situation. Lesson learned.

Thanks to Binh for his stimulating comments. I’ll limit myself, for now, to replies on three questions of his.

Sources on the 1958 anti-fascist countermobilization
Binh, you ask: “Where can I read about the specific actions taken that constituted the grassroots [anti-neo-fascist] countermobilization?”
I am not familiar with any detailed English-language treatment of the question. I suggest you scan through Bolivia Rising for the period under discussion — the fall of 2008. You might start at http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-11-04T15%3A06%3A00%2B11%3A00&max-results=20.
For an alternate view, see Webber’s “From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia,” which argues that the government responded passively to rightist threats and asks why the government did not call in the security forces earlier (p. 136). There is a policy question regarding whether it is appropriate to rely on repression by capitalist security forces to rein in fascism. Classical Marxism argued for an alternative policy of reliance on mass mobilization and self-defense.

Is my view one-sided?
You write, “I think John goes too far in the opposite direction in an attempt to correct a one-sided view of Morales.”
Binh, could you give me some specifics on this?

Conflicts between the Morales government and working people
You ask for my response about Jeff Webber’s reports of an incident where government officials insulted striking miners as counterrevolutionaries.
I assume we are talking here about the recent mass protest movement in Potosi. Some insulting comments by government spokespersons were widely reported; to an observer from afar, they seemed unjustified and damaging. The most important aspect of the government response, however, was the determination to find a resolution without the use of force or repression, a policy that was successful.
Conflicts between popular movements and the government are widespread in Bolivia today, for reasons that I touch on in the article above. Federico Fuentes’s review of Webber’s book describes the complexities of analyzing such conflicts; see http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2011/08/separating-fact-from-fantasy-in-bolivia.html.
Even under workers’ power, there will be conflicts between the government and workers’ movements. In the early Soviet republic, the Soviet authorities often used deadly force against workers, even when they had jusified complaints; see for example Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power.
In the Fourth Comintern Congress, such conflicts were described by the Executive Committee reporter, Clara Zetkin, as an inevitable problem, in which the government must act on behalf of the working class as a whole.

Where can I read about the specific actions taken that constituted the grassroots countermobilization? I was hoping for a footnote to this passage so I could investigate and learn more.

Webber: “[W]e need to consider seriously the impact of the absence of a revolutionary party in explaining the failure of the 2003 and 2005 mass mobilizations to translate into an overthrow of the existing capitalist state and the construction of a popular, sovereign, self-governing power of the indigenous proletarian and peasant majority from below. The left-indigenous movements demonstrated an absolutely impressive capacity to mobilize huge numbers, and to bring to a halt the production and circulation of commodities at the heart of normal capitalism in Bolivia. They did so for weeks at a time, several times a year, with certain key moments characterized by explosive popular eruptions, and hundreds of thousands in the streets of what is, indeed, a very small country. Nonetheless, the left-indigenous forces lacked a revolutionary party that might have provided the necessary leadership, strategy, and ideological coherence to transition from revolt to popular power.” (http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/479.php)

Here again is the Leninist mantra, the cult of the revolutionary party. The key lesson of every struggle or movement is: we need a revolutionary party.

This is both tiresome and false.

The reality is that the workers, peasants, and urban poor of Bolivia were insufficiently class conscious and organized to make a socialist revolution. So what? This is nothing new — every real revolutionary overturn begins in this way, whether in Russia in 1917 or Egypt today. It is this deficiency, not that of Evo Morales/MAS, that explains why capitalism remains intact in Bolivia. After all, Morales continues to enjoy mass support, support which seems to be growing!

This debate is polarized between those who are critical of Morales for not instituting soviet power and those who, in reaction to criticisms that they feel are ultra-left, formalistic, rigid, and one-sided, “bend the stick” in the opposite direction.

I see little value in characterizing the Morales government as one that has “reconstituted neoliberalism” when it has, judging by its mixed record, moved away from it. Continuing to argue that Morales is implementing neoliberal austerity with a “human face” leads to the logical conclusion that the masses support reconstituted neoliberalism when probably the opposite is the case.

By the same token, I think John goes too far in the opposite direction in an attempt to correct a one-sided view of Morales.

In one ISR article, Webber recounts an episode where “striking miners, teachers, health care workers, and factory workers were insulted as counterrevolutionaries by Morales government officials”. (http://www.isreview.org/issues/73/feat-bolivia.shtml) Where do you stand on this incident, John? I’m curious because in Venezuela, “general strikes” were organized by the right and workers were locked out of the state oil companies, so I know that just because a strike is proclaimed doesn’t automatically make it something socialists should support. Is this a similar situation? If not, I think we should side with the workers and against the government, even if it is run by MAS/Morales.

Riddell does not fully understand the dual nature of Social Democracy in general and the role of Morales; and the dual nature of Bourgeois Nationalism within the semi-colonies. His lack of understanding of the role of Social Democracy is how you counter-pose in a schematic and un-dialectical manner significant reforms for the masses as the only possible option within Bolivia or the Morales regime blocks chance of major social change.

Trotskyists have gone through Social Democratic governments for nearly 110 years of making concessions to the masses in order to block Socialist revolutions. We defend any gains and utilize them as a springboard to carry out a Socialist revolution. …

for full text, see http://brainontrotskyisttheory.blogspot.com/2011/05/reply-to-john-riddell-on-morales-regime.html