The crisis in Bolivia: how we got here, and how we escape

On Sunday 17 August, the governing Movement for Socialism (MAS), once the party of former president Evo Morales which has dominated the political scene for two decades lost the presidential elections, taking just 3.16 percent of the vote. In the following article, written on 16 July 2025, the comrades of Núcleo Comunista Revolucionario look at the roots of the crisis and how the Bolivian masses can escape it.

The main feature of Bolivian politics over the last 20 years has been the absolute dominance of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) on the national stage. This emerged from the revolutionary years of the water and gas wars, in the context of a revolutionary process throughout Latin America.

As a result of the absence of a revolutionary party with a programme that could lead the overthrow of capitalism in the country, which would have been very much possible at that time, after several years of social upheaval, the MAS emerged as a vehicle for the aspirations of the masses. Those aspirations included: sovereignty over natural resources, the expulsion of imperialism, and agrarian reform to lift the country out of underdevelopment.

The party's main leader, Evo Morales, promised to achieve all this within the limits of capitalism, a conception Marxists refer to as ‘reformism’. The person who gave this strategy a ‘theoretical’ expression was Alvaro García Linera with his theory of ‘Andean-Amazonian capitalism’. His idea was that Bolivia needs a prolonged period of capitalist development before the question of socialism can be raised.

In the end, as is always the case with stageism, neither did they succeed in achieving capitalist development, nor was the question of socialism posed.

Twenty years later, the country's politics is characterised by the collapse of the MAS, a consequence of this same reformism. The party's promises proved to be illusory: it is increasingly apparent that we remain condemned to crisis, poverty and underdevelopment. The question then is: why has nothing changed? And what is necessary to really create a dignified future for workers?

One year after the 2019 coup, thanks to the pressure from the mobilised workers and peasants, the MAS won overwhelmingly in the subsequent elections. They gained 55.1 percent of the vote: almost double that obtained by Carlos Mesa, who came second.

However, this result reflected not so much enthusiasm for the MAS as a rejection of the right wing, which in the short year it was in power wreaked havoc on the standard of living of the vast majority of the population.

Luis Arce, who had been the finance minister throughout most of Evo's presidency, came to power with a programme that was essentially a continuation of the policies that the MAS had followed up until 2019. Gone were the days of radical promises of nationalisation. Now, it was deepening the ‘Process of Change’ that was on the order of the day.

The problem, however, was that the objective conditions had changed. The material basis for the MAS’ reformism had ceased to exist. In fact, it had already ceased to exist as early as 2014, with the fall in oil prices and the end of the commodities boom. Public spending became unsustainable. In order to maintain it, it became necessary to start using international currency reserves, which had accumulated to record levels in the previous period.

This provided a certain cushion for the MAS government and the possibility of artificially extending the ‘economic bonanza’. However, reserves are not infinite, and in 2022, foreign currency shortages began to be felt: the official exchange rate of the dollar is still fixed (6.96 bolivianos per dollar), but a parallel exchange rate began to develop, which to date has reached highs of 20 Bs. per dollar.

Subsequently, the depletion of reserves also began to manifest itself in fuel shortages, which the government has subsidised since before the MAS even came to power. This subsidy represents an enormous cost to the state budget (more than $2 billion in 2024), but its elimination would be an extremely unpopular policy, raising prices throughout the economy.

Evo's government actually tried to eliminate the subsidy in 2010, but the masses responded with massive mobilisations, forcing the MAS to retreat with its tail between its legs. Since then, no one has tried again, even though sooner or later under capitalism, the elimination of these subsidies will become a necessity.

From bad to worse

The economic, political and social situation in Bolivia seems to be deteriorating from bad to worse. Recently, acute fuel shortages have once again highlighted the depletion of international currency reserves held by the Central Bank, which have been plummeting for 10 years.

In this sense, the current outcome was entirely predictable, and yet the government seems to have been caught with its pants down. The truth is that they did not want to acknowledge where their policies were leading them. Riding on the inertia of the last twenty years, Arce and his government simply waited for a miracle to save them from imminent disaster.

This miracle was supposed to be the white gold hidden beneath the Salar de Uyuni, lithium. In recent years, there has been a huge stir in Bolivian politics and society about how this resource of the future would finally lift us out of underdevelopment. We Bolivians are now in the process of swallowing yet another disappointment however.

After several failed attempts to build a lithium industry, at the end of last year the Arce government concluded a series of contracts with the Russian company Uranium One and Hong Kong CBC Investment Limited of China for the extraction of lithium carbonate directly from the salt flats. There would be no battery production or any other type of industrial processing to speak of. Rather, it would simply mean the exploitation of a natural resource for immediate export. In other words, once again, Bolivia is condemned to remain a raw materials exporter. The reasons for this go back much further and it is essential to explain them, which we will do later.

First, it is necessary to understand the conflict surrounding the current contracts and how they fit into the country's political and economic crisis. Although the executive branch signed the contracts, they must be approved by the legislature in order to be valid, and they have been blocked there because the Arce administration does not have a majority without the support of the Evo Morales movement.

Arce is currently living from loan to loan to prevent the situation from spiralling out of control before the mid-year elections / Image: Plurinational Legislative Assembly, Flickr

Right-wing opponents have used these conflicts to cynically accuse the Arce government of giving away the country's resources, as if they were not the most avid fanatics of prostituting the country to imperialism. This does not mean that Arce is not giving away resources; he is indeed doing so, but the right wing is the last one with the right to criticise him for this.

The content of these contracts is pure imperialism on the part of China and Russia. Why? The central element of the contracts with both companies is loans totalling $2 billion, which would be used by the state to contract their services. In other words, $2 billion that the state would borrow to pay the companies for the construction of the lithium plants.

Subsequently, the loans must be repaid with interest. What we have in the end is double plundering: once for the payment of services, and again for the repayment of loans. The export of capital is very lucrative. An analysis of the contracts reveals that in virtually all cases, their implementation would mean millions in losses for the national economy every year.

Clearly, what we have here is a textbook case of imperialist plunder by two nations that have recently emerged on the world imperialist stage. Here is a practical, not just theoretical, answer to those who propose that so-called ‘multipolarity’ will lead to greater prosperity for backward capitalist countries. Quite the contrary. The only way that natural resources such as lithium can be put at the service of society and thus lift us out of poverty is through democratic planning of the economy, rational industrialisation, taking into account the needs of the environment and communities.

Arce is desperate to push the contracts through. Why? It is worth emphasising that the fact that the economy as a whole will suffer does not mean that a small group of people cannot line their pockets with these contracts. However, the most important element is the central problem of the Bolivian economy: the lack of foreign currency. A multi-million dollar loan such as these contracts would inject much-needed liquidity into the economy to mitigate the fuel supply crisis.

In fact, Arce is currently living from loan to loan to prevent the situation from spiralling out of control before the mid-year elections. Not only the lithium contracts, but several other million-dollar loans are stuck in the legislature. Arce blames legislators for not approving the loans that would allow the purchase of fuel, but all loans must be repaid with interest. What Arce is actually doing is making the situation worse in the long term. However, he does not care, as long as everything goes to hell after the elections and not before.

This is where the behaviour of Evo Morales and his followers comes in. Evo was disqualified from participating in this year's elections, but he is still not giving up. His allies in the legislature have been consistently blocking Arce's loans, not out of concern for the country's economic future, but with the aim of unleashing a political crisis that would somehow allow Evo to return to the presidency. Added to this are the various demonstrations organised by his supporters, with the same aim. How successful this strategy will be remains to be seen, but it is most likely that Evo's political career is over.

Amidst all this turmoil, Álvaro García Linera [AGL, former vice president under Morales and the originator of the ‘Andean-Amazonian capitalism’ theory] decided to make a comeback in the country's politics, commenting that the dollars to solve the crisis do in fact exist, but not in the hands of the state. Rather, they are in the hands of private exporters who decide to hide the vast majority in tax havens instead of reintroducing them into the national economy.

The former vice president is absolutely right about this, and the solution he proposes also proved to be surprisingly correct: ‘grab the exporters by the throat.’ We completely agree! But how? We will return to this later. First, it is worth contrasting this highly combative stance with the actual policy of the MAS government when AGL was vice president.

In practice, Evo, AGL and Arce (then Minister of Economy) bowed down before the businessmen and sang the praises of private property. In fact, Evo himself responded to Álvaro's comments by saying, “We never grabbed anyone by the scruff of the neck, we never took away companies. I welcome the meetings we had with the Confederation of Bolivian Businessmen.”

This much better expresses the true position of the MAS reformists. We appreciate Evo's honesty, but we must say that it is precisely because they remained within the limits of private property and capitalism that we are in the current situation. The MAS came to power on the basis of a revolutionary mass movement that demanded sovereignty over natural resources, mainly hydrocarbons.

The demand of the masses was nationalisation without compensation. What the MAS did was in fact a slick betrayal of this demand, paying every last penny of what was nationalised (only 50 percent +1 of the shares, by the way) to the multinational oil companies.

This is the starting point for understanding the entire development of the country over the last 20 years: the cloaked betrayal of the MAS. The mass mobilisation of the working class and all oppressed sectors during the water and gas wars presented an opportunity to lift Bolivia out of underdevelopment.

With the expropriation of key sectors of the economy under democratic control by the workers, the expropriation and centralisation of the banking system and economic planning, together with the establishment of a state monopoly on foreign trade, enormous amounts of resources could have been allocated to the real development of the country.

Large investments in health, education and industry would have radically transformed the country, guaranteeing employment and eliminating poverty, among many other things. Obviously, this would never be possible under capitalism, as it means the end of the sacred right to private property. And yet, it is the only way Bolivia will emerge from its chronic backwardness.

What would have been necessary would have been to base ourselves on and promote the revolutionary movement of the masses to take these measures, destroying the capitalist state and replacing it with a workers' state, as described by Lenin in The State and Revolution. This was the way to grab the exporters by the throat: throw them into the back seat so that they would be nothing more than spectators to the radical transformation of society. We would have found a much better destination for their wealth than the Swiss banks or secret accounts in Panama where it ended up. No party was up to these tasks. After years of social upheaval, therefore, the MAS was able to fill the vacuum with its reformist programme of class conciliation (‘social consensus’).

Bolivian capitalism: late on the scene

Bolivia is a country that entered the global capitalist arena late: when we gained our independence and tore down the main colonial barriers to the development of national capitalism, there were already countries (such as Great Britain) that had highly developed industries and exported cheap goods around the world. In the domestic market, the products of Bolivia's fledgling industry could not compete with the low prices of foreign goods.

In addition, there was already a world market where Bolivian capitalists could sell their goods (initially silver, a legacy of colonialism, and later tin), so there was no need to develop a domestic market, which would have meant agrarian reform to free the peasants and domestic investment to increase purchasing power. Agrarian reform could not be carried out by the Bolivian capitalist class, despite being a traditionally bourgeois task (for example, it was carried out by the French bourgeoisie during the French Revolution from 1789).

Once again, this is linked to the fact that we entered the global capitalist arena late. The Bolivian bourgeoisie was closely tied to the feudal landowners, who in turn were already connected to international finance capital, creating a parasitic and impotent capitalist oligarchy.

Agrarian reform could not be carried out by the Bolivian capitalist class, despite being a traditionally bourgeois task / Image: Eliasquispe, Wikimedia Commons

Instead, the task was inherited by the proletariat, which pushed for agrarian reform with the 1952 revolution. However, because the revolution did not abolish capitalism, land slowly became concentrated in a few hands again, to the point that agrarian reform was once again a central issue for the revolutionary movement at the beginning of the century.

This demand was also betrayed by the MAS in the most devious way possible: the new 2009 constitution prohibited the ownership of land tracts larger than five thousand hectares (Art. 398). However, the following article assures landowners that this provision only applies to “properties acquired after the entry into force of this Constitution,” effectively leaving the land in the hands of large landowners.

As if this were not enough, all the machinery that the Bolivian bourgeoisie needed for its operations could be imported from other countries that already had the necessary factories, making it unnecessary to invest in the country to develop this industry, which would have generated quality, well-paid jobs. All this corresponds to the global division of labour that develops under global capitalism according to its own laws. It has condemned us to be a poor and underdeveloped country, dominated by imperialism, despite possessing immense natural wealth. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, the country is poor and subjugated precisely because it possesses immense mineral and natural wealth.

This position has remained unchanged for the country ever since. The resources we export have varied, but our role as an exporter of raw materials and importer of finished goods remains, and will remain as long as we are locked into the capitalist system.

How, then, can we explain the economic boom we experienced when the MAS came to power? The truth is that it was mainly due to the international situation. This period coincided with a time of immense economic growth in China from 2004 to 2005, which was then further boosted by huge state investments (and debt) in order to overcome the 2008 crisis.

This economic growth generated immense demand for natural resources (and a corresponding increase in prices) that benefited all Latin American countries, which generally occupy the same place in the global division of labour. This period, known as the ‘commodities boom’, came to an end in 2014 when oil prices collapsed, finally leading us to the situation we are now in.

However, the role played by global economic dynamics in Bolivia's internal development is not limited to this period. As the capitalist mode of production developed, the indivisible whole that is the global market emerged from the different national economies. It is impossible to understand the development of any country without understanding the role it plays in this and how it relates to other countries in the world.

Therefore, any serious economic analysis cannot be limited to the analysis of the national economy in isolation, but must understand it as part of the global market and start from the state of the latter. For Bolivia, which as a raw material exporter is even more dependent on the ups and downs of the global economy, this point is even more important.

The central feature of capitalism worldwide today is its organic crisis. What does this mean? The fact that the profits of capitalists come from the unpaid labour of the working class means that the latter can never buy back all the goods it produces. This leads to overproduction.

When this reaches a critical point, it becomes impossible for capitalists to sell their products at a profitable price, leading to the periodic crises of capitalism we know, which restore the rate of profit by destroying means of production and throwing hundreds and thousands of workers onto the streets.

However, the current crisis is not merely a cyclical crisis, but an existential crisis of the system. Overproduction has reached fantastic levels. This is expressed by bourgeois economists as ‘excess capacity’. What this really means is that a portion of factories are left idle. Productive capacity is not fully utilised because it is not profitable to produce, even though in many cases we are talking about the production of human necessities.

Herein lies the irrationality of capitalism in its phase of decomposition: workers cannot find work, while factories stand empty. The industrial capacity utilisation rate in China, the ‘world's factory’, is currently 74.1 percent. In other words, more than a quarter of China's productive forces are gathering dust!

In the US and Europe, industrial capacity utilisation is around 77 percent – not much better. A more concrete example of this can be seen in the fight against the climate crisis. An energy transition is absolutely necessary, and solar panel production plays a central role in this. In 2024, Chinese panel production exceeded global demand. But instead of carrying out large-scale installations, most of them are in warehouses around the world. And the fact that China is so efficient in producing them actually increases tensions with other countries, which see their industries threatened or themselves simply stop producing.

Massive global overproduction not only means a waste of humanity's productive forces, it also means that capitalists can no longer find lucrative avenues to reinvest their capital. If too much is already being produced with the number of factories in existence, it makes no sense to build even more factories.

This is the reason for the abysmal growth rates of the world economy since 2008 (with the exception of China). Interest rates were very close to zero (in some cases even below zero) right up until the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim was to encourage productive investment, and yet this essentially did not take place. Instead, more and more money flowed into speculative sectors, such as crypto-currencies, real estate, and various financial instruments, inflating gigantic bubbles that will burst sooner or later.

The other side of the irrational capitalist coin is that the economic compulsion of competition forces giant multinational companies to continue investing in new technologies and greater productive capacity, because if they do not, their competitors will steal their market share. The result of this is that overproduction worsens even further.

This is the anarchy of capitalist production. Because no company knows how much its competitors are producing, or how great the demand really is for the product they want to sell (this can only be verified once the goods are brought to market, after the production process is complete), there is enormous waste. In a democratically planned economy, such a situation would not arise, and the resources available to humanity could be used rationally and in harmony with human beings and nature.

In the past, attempts were made to overcome the barrier of overproduction by expanding credit: if workers' wages are not enough to buy back what they produce, let them go into debt! This worked for a while to expand the market, but now what this short-sighted policy has left behind are mountains of debt at all levels: the total debt of the global economy represents 325 percent of global gross domestic product.

This is unsustainable and will sooner or later lead to a monumental debt crises. However, it is already having an impact today: debt acts as a huge drag on the economic development of entire countries, which instead of investing productively must devote a large part of their budget to debt repayment. For Sri Lanka, public debt interest payments alone account for 60 percent of government revenue.

Recently, the immense US debt, coupled with Trump's erratic policies, meant that several financial rating agencies downgraded the rating of US debt from AAA to AA. With the US being the world’s dominant imperialist power, whose economy is highly dependent on the cheap credit that its prestige gives it access to, this development is significant. The market is increasingly nervous about the amount of debt that the global economy has accumulated.

It is important to vividly illustrate the state of the global economy in order to understand Bolivia’s position within it, and how the national situation may develop.

The position of raw materials exporter means that the national economy is even more tied to the global economy: the organic crisis of capitalism threatens to drag us down. The economic boom that characterised all MAS governments until recently is definitely over, and as a result, this party is collapsing spectacularly.

The crisis of capitalism is also the crisis of reformism. In response to the crises of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020, governments around the world injected huge amounts of money into the economy to rescue the system from catastrophic collapse. Former free market fanatics begged the state to save them.

All this money injected into the economy without a counterweight in production created enormous inflationary pressures, which began to manifest themselves globally in 2022. In Bolivia, this inflation took a little longer to surface. When Arce boasted that Bolivia had the lowest inflation in the region in 2023, it was true. But that is no longer a consolation.

Mining

In a way, it could be said that the period of stability was determined by the economic preponderance of hydrocarbons. In 2014, according to INE data, hydrocarbons accounted for 46.15 percent of exports, while in 2024 they accounted for only 22.93 percent. At the same time, mining has regained importance, rising from 26 percent of exports in 2014 to 44.4 percent in 2024. Unlike hydrocarbons, mining contributes almost no revenue to the state, while the state subsidises its production with fuel subsidies.

Of particular importance are zinc, silver and gold mining. The latter is also closely linked to organised crime. It is estimated that more than $1 billion worth of illegally mined gold was exported last year. Conflicts between different groups involved in gold mining can turn violent, as in the community of Yani, north of La Paz, where a bomb was detonated in April this year, killing five people.

The MAS policy of promoting cooperatives, which are now the main form of organisation in the mines, has consciously or unconsciously had the effect of dismantling the miners' organisation. Day labourers in cooperatives do not have any of the benefits or protections that a worker in a company-owned mine would have had.

Despite the name ‘cooperative’, there is a stark difference between the real owners of the mines, the members of the cooperatives, and the workers. The average wage of a day labourer ranges from 200 to 700 bolivianos per day, for working days that often exceed 12 hours. However, there are days when, if they fail to extract any minerals, the remuneration is much lower.

Unlike hydrocarbons, mining contributes almost no revenue to the state, while the state subsidises its production with fuel subsidies / Image: Martin St Amant, Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile, the cooperative members make millions in profits. In practice, the cooperative serves to cover up what in the vast majority of cases is actually a private company.

The only way to expose this deception and confront the criminal organisations that are increasingly penetrating this sector is through the mobilisation of the mining proletariat, recovering its historical traditions of struggle, as expressed precisely in the Pulacayo theses.

[Editor: The Pulacayo Theses of 1946, adopted by the miners’ federation, translated Trotsky's Transitional Programme of 1938 into the concrete conditions of Bolivia. They essentially pointed out the need for the workers to take power in an alliance with the peasants and then proceed towards socialism.]

The state is incapable of controlling illegal mining or enforcing the rights of hyper-exploited workers, firstly because it is an instrument of the capitalists to facilitate exploitation, and secondly because it is a weak state.

Unlike the imperialist bourgeoisies of Europe or the United States, which had centuries to perfect their state machinery and their indirect control over its institutions, the bourgeoisie in countries such as Bolivia, having arrived late on the historical stage, has been unable to develop its state. To maintain control, it depends much more on direct corruption of officials, and democracy itself has often threatened its power, making dictatorships necessary to maintain the domination of capital.

The clearest example of this in Bolivia was the Banzer dictatorship of 1971-78, which emerged as part of Operation Condor in the Southern Cone region to crush a series of revolutionary movements, represented in Bolivia particularly by the Popular Assembly, ‘the first Soviet in Latin America’.

Agriculture

The dynamics of the global crisis of capitalism are reproduced at the national level, where the incentive for Bolivian capitalists to invest (which was already low from the outset, as we saw above) is now even lower. An indicative example of all the contradictions of Bolivian capitalism is the agro-industrial sector.

With the decline in hydrocarbon exports, the agricultural sector, particularly soybean and sugar cane production and livestock farming, has gained in importance. A representative of the Eastern Agricultural Chamber even said that “agriculture is the solution to the crisis in Bolivia.”

The government seems to share this view. In recent years, the agricultural sector has experienced the highest economic growth of any sector, and the state has established a $300 million credit fund to boost this growth, offering loans at an interest rate of just 0.5 percent.

The agricultural sector also benefits from a large amount of credit from private banks, and it is not small producers who are benefiting: in 2023, 63 percent of loans for soybean production were granted to eight large companies in a sector with more than 17,000 borrowers. In the sugar sector, 90 percent of loans were granted to five companies out of more than 2,000 borrowers in the sector.

According to ASFI, at the end of 2024, the agricultural sector's loan portfolio stood at 29 billion bolivianos.

The fact that the loans are in the national currency is highly relevant (in 2024, 99.5 percent of all loans granted by the financial system were in bolivianos). Considering that the vast majority of loans are directed to large companies involved in exports, one thing becomes clear: the government's hopes that the agro-export sector will be the source of much-needed dollars for the national economy will be dashed.

Bolivia has had historic agrarian reforms. But the fact is that they were carried out within limits of capitalism, in a country with backward capitalist development / Image: Dennis Jarvis, Flickr

The incentive for agro-exporters is not to inject their dollars into the economy, but to hoard them abroad, exacerbating the devaluation of the national currency and thus reducing the value of their loans. A loan of 100 million bolivianos is cheaper for those with ample access to dollars if they are valued at 15 Bs. instead of seven.

The land issue has still not been resolved in Bolivia. Bolivia has had historic agrarian reforms. But the fact is that they were carried out within limits of capitalism, in a country with backward capitalist development. Therefore, the tendency was always towards the concentration of land once more in the hands of a few large landowners linked to financial capital.

Data on the distribution of credit to the agricultural sector clearly illustrates this fact. Thus, in the same country, we see the coexistence of thousands of impoverished peasants engaged in subsistence agriculture alongside mechanised agricultural industry generating millions of dollars for agribusiness and banking capitalists. This is truly one of the most grotesque expressions of the contradictions of capitalism in our country.

Marx wrote in the first volume of Capital that:

“All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil [...] Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the technique and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.”

Bolivian capitalism is incapable of developing technology, but it certainly exploits the worker and destroys the land. In recent years, Bolivia has become the second most rapidly deforested country in the world. Once again, the fundamental reason for this is that the land issue has not been resolved, alongside the short-sightedness of capital, which is only capable of thinking about short-term profits. 

Several studies, including one by Oxfam in 2024, have established that the main driver of deforestation is agribusiness, with the support of the banks. The lifeblood of the agricultural sector is cheap credit, and the best collateral to guarantee this is precisely the land itself. Land speculation is also a major incentive for deforestation. 

In this irresponsible plundering of the land, agrocapitalists have the full support of the state. Here we see once again the true character of MAS’ reformism: servility to capital and its representatives. 

The negative consequences of the MAS’ policy of class collaboration – which in practice means a policy of betraying the working class and the poor  – are not limited to the agricultural sector. Its betrayal of the promise of agrarian reform in the 2009 constitution, detailed above, meant that for thousands of poor peasants, the only way to obtain the land they so badly needed was to expand their farms into forested and protected areas. 

Owning a piece of land is an objective necessity for the peasantry. The only way to solve this problem definitively and sustainably is through the expropriation and redistribution of large estates and the planning of agricultural production as part of a general plan for economic development under the democratic control of the workers.

The central point once again is that the wealth exists. Bolivia has enough resources to guarantee a dignified existence for the entire population, but they are concentrated in the hands of a few, who have no interest in using this wealth for the common good.

Their programme and ours

The political representatives of a class are an inevitable reflection of the nature of that class. In that sense, the Bolivian bourgeoisie, incapable of innovating or developing itself or the country, deserves its pathetic representatives. Even with a generalised crisis of the ‘left’ in MAS, faced with a severe economic crisis, the right-wing opposition is incapable of reaching agreement. They will go into the August elections divided, yet their programme is essentially the same: the workers and poor pay for the crisis of their system.

Austerity and cuts may take various forms and be directed at different sectors, but the result is the same: worsening living conditions for the vast majority and servility to capital. Yet, as we have already explained at length, they will not succeed in developing the country. The promise that ‘we must suffer now to see the benefits in the future’ could not be more empty. 

The crisis of capitalism threatens to drag all of humanity into the abyss, through climate collapse, increasingly numerous and devastating wars, or who knows what other form of barbarism. The only way out for humanity, including the small country in which we live, is the world socialist revolution and the radical transformation of society. This will be the end of humanity’s prehistory and the transition to a truly human history, free from barbaric class oppression and all other forms of oppression.

We have repeatedly said that Arce's programme was only a continuation of MAS’ programme in a worse economic and social context / Image: Plurinational Legislative Assembly, Flickr

However, this is not what the ‘left’ heir to MAS is offering. Faced with the deepest crisis of capitalism in its history, which is also beginning to manifest itself in our country, they offer exactly the same as the right wing. They are desperately trying to save a doomed system. 

We have repeatedly said that Arce's programme was only a continuation of MAS’ programme in a worse economic and social context. Now Evo has confirmed this analysis, proposing in his programme a continuation of ‘Arcista’ (read: capitalist) policies of austerity and class collaboration. He states this clearly: “a State Austerity Programme to balance public spending, stabilise prices and the exchange rate”, committing himself to a monetarist adjustment policy that will inevitably be paid for by the working class.

The logic behind this type of programme, typical of social democracy, is that it is necessary to tighten the belt in order to overcome the crisis of capitalism, which logically (they say) should sooner or later give way to a resurgence of growth. But we have clearly explained that this is not the case with the current crisis: the trend is only downwards. 

There may be and will be moments of growth, as the central dynamic of capitalism is precisely that of cycles of boom and bust. However, given the organic crisis of the system, the booms will be mild and superficial and the crises will be deep and pronounced. Technically, the world economy is still growing at the moment, but what will happen when a recession hits?

In the past, Bolivia's special position – thanks to its commodity boom – allowed for a prolonged period of stability and relative well-being, seemingly isolated from the ups and downs of the world market, although in reality closely linked to it. Now, the prospect before us is that of a global capitalist crisis that will violently drag the weak Bolivian national economy in its ups and downs, zigs and zags.

Any party that comes to power after this year's elections will be forced to carry out the mandates of capital, which in the deep global crisis will exert extreme pressure to annihilate the gains of the past period and restore economic equilibrium (read: the profits of the capitalists, national and international). However, any attempt to restore the economic equilibrium will only destroy the fragile social and political equilibrium.

This will be a government of crisis, and its survival until the next election is not guaranteed. The only class with the objective interest and capacity to carry out the necessary transformation of society is the international working class. It is clear that due to the existence of the nation-state (an essentially capitalist formation), the revolution will begin on the national level. It is not possible to say in advance which country this will begin with, but if it is to be victorious, the socialist revolution must move to the international plane. 

The working class must smash all the old nation-states to pieces, since they act as a brake on the development of the productive forces of humanity. The international division of labour and the world market mean that the material basis for socialism only exists on a global level.

The 20 years of MAS government and its policy of class collaboration have meant a setback for the working class in Bolivia, which is currently not in a position to fulfil the tasks that history demands of it. Even its most basic forms of organisation are in crisis. The powerful trade union federation (COB), born in the fire of the 1952 revolution, is being led by opportunists of the worst kind. However, this situation cannot last forever. Sooner or later, the working class will be forced to move again and rediscover its traditions of struggle. At that moment, it will turn to its traditional organisations, above all the COB, and will get rid of these ‘leaders’ as easily as one squashes a flea.

When the working class returns to the scene, faced with the delirium and despair offered by the entire spectrum of establishment politicians, the slogan of international liberation must be inscribed on the banner of the Bolivian proletariat.

• Return to the Pulacayo Theses and the documents of the 1971 National Assembly!
• For class independence! The interests of the working class are totally opposed to those of the capitalist class. Reconciliation, as attempted by the MAS government, is not possible. The COB must once again become a militant fighting organisation of the workers.
• For the expropriation of the country's main industries: mining, hydrocarbons, food production, etc., and democratic planning of the economy by the workers.
• For the expropriation and centralisation of the banks. All the millions that the bourgeoisie has hidden must be put at the service of society.
• Rejection of all foreign debts. We workers have no reason to pay the loans of the bourgeoisie, lackeys of imperialism.
• For the expropriation of large estates and a genuine agrarian reform that gives dignity to the country's peasants.
• For the planning of agricultural production in harmony with nature and to meet the needs of the population, for the voluntary establishment of collective farms that show the way forward for the peasantry.
• For the end of all forms of oppression and the end of the exploitation of man by man!
• For the world socialist revolution!
• Workers of the world, unite!

We must organise ourselves to make this programme a reality.