The world today is hardly like the world of the long sixties. But if you ask people to get and stay involved for the sake of getting and staying involved, with no understanding of purpose of such involvement, you'll eventually burn people out.
On 3/21/07, Jim Straub <rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On the left there is just as little consensus: communism and m-l politics
> are discredited to many because of the states they produced, third world
> anti-imperialism ditto, anarchism has a comprehensive utopian vision but
> unable to pull of any results, nader sucks and nobody voted for him anyway,
> and even realist projects like Brazil's PT and the italian left have wound
> up in power, supporting neoliberalism AND us imperialism.
When movements are on the ebb, you have more time, so it's time to study and see if you can come up with a better understanding of the world, in light of new facts that you discover through your study.
> Given the options
> I'm not suprised Yoshie champions Chavez and Iran, but principles aside
> neither is a replicable model given the fact that they float on oil (and
> Bolivia, while inspiring, also pulled off their victory in the country with
> the most radical working class in the world).
In terms of organized workers' relations' to the government, Bolivia* is more like Iran than Venezuela, where the Chavez government has yet to be seriously challenged by organized workers who are not supported by Washington, but in Bolivia as well as Iran, organized workers are not yet radical as "the working class." They are often busy fighting sectoral fights. Class struggles in the final analysis are inseparable from intra-class struggles anywhere, but they tend to fuse in a particularly combustible way in a country in the South, and Bolivia is one of the most acute examples, where one kind of miners have killed another kind under the MAS government.
* <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6337921.stm> 7 February 2007 Clashes as Bolivia miners protest
More than 20,000 miners have marched into the Bolivian city of La Paz, throwing dynamite on their way, to protest against a proposed tax rise.
Parts of La Paz were paralysed by the blasts and clashes between miners and passers-by. Police said they had seized more than 270 sticks of dynamite.
The miners say the tax would be unfair on small independent co-operatives.
The march went ahead despite a government announcement on Monday that co-operatives' taxes would be frozen.
Officials said the tax increase would be directed at larger private mining companies.
<http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42543000/jpg/_42543519_miner_dyn_ap203b.jpg> Miners lighting sticks of dynamite
In pictures: Miners' protest <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6338439.stm>
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/687/35668> Behind the 'tin war' in Huanuni Ruth Ratcliffe, Sucre 13 October 2006
For two days in early October, the sides of the barren Posokoni Hill above the mining town of Huanuni, 150 kilometres southeast of Bolivia's capital La Paz, were transformed into a war zone in the two most violent days since leftist Evo Morales was elected the country's president last December.
On October 5-6, rival groups of miners battled for control of the hill's tin deposits using dynamite and guns, leaving 17 miners and residents dead and 81 wounded.
<http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/455/1/> Tin War in Bolivia: Conflict Between Miners Leaves 17 Dead Written by April Howard and Benjamin Dangl Tuesday, 10 October 2006
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The vast majority of miners are desperately poor, working in terrible conditions and with a life expectancy of 10 more years once they start working. The mines were nationalized in Bolivia in 1952 with the creation of the COMIBOL (Bolivian Mining Corporation) making all miners state employees. Since then, low world metal prices and the election of neoliberal presidents have led to the privatization of sections of the mining industry, giving rise to two distinct kinds of mining employment. Those who still work for the COMIBOL are unionized, "salaried workers" who receive a steady pay check and some minimal benefits. Other miners started or joined private ventures, called "cooperatives," though these businesses, like the COMIBOL unions, are extremely hierarchical. "Cooperativists" are either "associates" of the cooperative, employed by the cooperative, or are paid based on the amount and quality of ore they are able to mine on any given day. Cooperativists are dependent on the COMIBOL or private companies who buy their ore, but don't have to pay them benefits. It was these two groups that battled each other in Huanuni, marking the most recent outbreak of violence in this volatile industry. -- Yoshie
