Spaces of Uneven Development and Class Struggle in Bolivia: Transformation or Trasformismo ?

Spaces of Uneven Development andClass Struggle in Bolivia:

Transformation or Trasformismo?

Chris HeskethDepartment of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK;

[email protected]

Adam David MortonDepartment of Political Economy, University of Sydney, Australia

Abstract: This article engages with the politics of class struggle and state formation inmodern Bolivia. It examines how current forms of political contestation are shaped by thelegacy of the Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent path of development. In so doing,we therefore explore spaces of uneven and combined development in relation toongoing transformations in Bolivia linked to emergent class strategies of passive revolu-tion, meaning processes of historical development marked by the overall exclusion ofsubaltern classes. With this in mind we argue that state formation in Bolivia can be readas part of the history of passive revolution in Latin America within the spatial conditionsof uneven and combined development shaping the geopolitics of the region. However,the expansion of passive revolution as a mode of historical development has beenand continues to be rigorously contested by subaltern forces creating further spacesof class struggle.

Keywords: Gramsci, passive revolution, uneven and combined development, statespace, Bolivia

Bolivia from the years 2000 to 2005 stood in a moment of potentially revolutionarytransformation. Spurred by indigenous social movement activism protestingagainst the privatisation of water and natural gas, two successive governmentswere brought down, and a new political party with its base in these radicalisedsocial movements, the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS: Movement TowardsSocialism), led by Evo Morales came to power in 2006. Promising to re-found thenation, the national constitution was rewritten and subsequently approved by areferendum. This new constitution would enshrine greater indigenous rights andnew forms of popular democracy, including recall of public officials. Food securityand basic services were to be ensured and Bolivia was recast as a pluri-ethnic nationwith 36 such separate indigenous national groups recognised within the country.Since this time, however, the initial promise of revolutionary transformation hasbeen dissipated and instead a more conciliatory stance has been adopted towardsowners of wealth, both in terms of the forces of reaction within Bolivia itself, as wellas transnational corporations whom the administration continues to woo forpurposes of investment (Regalsky 2010:36).

Antipode Vol. 46 No. 1 2014 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 149–169 doi: 10.1111/anti.12038© 2013 The Authors. Antipode © 2013 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

History is therefore in danger of repeating itself, in the sense that this could be asecond time since the Bolivian National Revolution (1952) that a potentiallyrevolutionary moment in the country has been channelled back into the consolida-tion and expansion of capitalist social relations. Rather than achieving a revolution-ary break with the logic of capitalism, Bolivia is in danger of becoming victim to thehistory of passive revolution in Latin America and elsewhere. This theme of passiverevolution informs the first theoretical concern of the article. Passive revolutionrefers to processes in which aspects of the social relations of capitalist developmentare either instituted and/or expanded, resulting in both “revolutionary” ruptureand a “restoration” of social relations across different scales and spatial aspects ofthe state (Gramsci 1971:106–114; Burgos 2002; Morton 2011:18). A passive revo-lution therefore represents a condition in which processes of revolution are at oncepartially fulfilled and displaced (Callinicos 2010:491). As Jessop (1990:213) notes,“the crucial element in passive revolution is the statisation of reorganisation orrestructuring, so that popular initiatives from below are contained or destroyedand the relationship of ruler-ruled is maintained or reimposed”.Processes of passive revolution in Latin America will clearly be different across

state forms, but the condition of passive revolution does provide certain clues tothe unity-within-diversity of Latin American history and thus the “non-classical”forms of transition to capitalist modernity within the region (Munck 1979:31;Coutinho 2012:165; Modonesi 2013). Within these circumstances the politics oftrasformismo comes to prevail (rather than genuine transformation), meaning theprotracted absorption of class contradictions through “molecular changes whichin fact progressively modify the pre-existing composition of forces, and hencebecome the matrix of new changes” (Gramsci 1971:109). Part of the historicaldevelopment of passive revolution, then, trasformismo is “a process that attemptsto exclude the subaltern classes from any protagonism in the process of socialtransformation by co-opting their leaders” (Coutinho 2012:161). Once inductedinto the halls of power, revolutionary demands are frequently displaced.The article’s second concern is with issues of uneven and combined development

and how this has informed and continues to shape Bolivian politics. David Harvey(2006:xix) prominently opined that historical materialism cannot exist without asolid appreciation of the dialectics of spatio-temporality, hence the agenda-settingadvancement of historical-geographical materialism. One can add that much ofthe recent literature within historical sociology, despite spatial-temporal claims, failsto deliver spatial analysis of uneven and combined development (eg Lacher 2006;Rosenberg 2006; Teschke 2003). Historical sociology in this appearance can berecognised as aspatial. For example, Justin Rosenberg (2012) references the spatio-temporal character of uneven and combined development without examining theorganisation of space, the spatial logistics of state power, or the contradictions ofspace. Space is “there” but redundant and unexplored, a mere happenstance ofdevelopmental unevenness and combination.Equally, David Harvey has levied criticism against otherwise commendable

analysis of social struggles in Bolivia for its aspatial treatment of class power inwhich Santa Cruz, El Alto and Cochabamba appear as “mere sites”where the forcesof class opposition and populist indigenous politics happen to play out (see Harvey

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2012:143 on Webber 2011). This tendency is clearly evident in Webber’s summaryof the “revolutionary epoch” of left-indigenous protest in Bolivia (from 2000 to2005) where a spatial perspective is missing. “The Cochabamba Water War of2000”, Webber (2013:152) argues, “Aymara peasant insurrections of the westernaltiplano (high plateau) in 2000 and 2001, and proletarian antitax revolt in La Pazand El Alto in February 2003 constituted the opening acts of what developed intoa five-year cycle of left-indigenous insurrection in Bolivia”, but without spatialisingthese different place-based practices of indigenous revolt. Just as historical material-ism benefits from a solid appreciation of space and time in the form of historical-geographical materialism, then we argue that so too can historical sociologysimilarly gain from spatial-temporal insights, specifically by advancing what weterm here an historical geographical sociology. Therefore, in order to explore thecurrent tensions and possibilities opened up by the coming to power of the MASwe will provide the beginnings of an historical geographical sociology of stateformation and spaces of uneven development in Bolivia, stemming from theNational Revolution of 1952 onwards. In so doing, our argument advances twomain contributions covering the spatially interrelated dynamics of both unevenand combined development and passive revolution in Bolivia.While keeping these two main axes in mind, our argument proceeds as follows.

First, we examine the legacy of the National Revolution. It is argued that theoutcome of this was a passive revolutionary process that was set in motion byimportant spatial logistics of uneven and combined development. In the secondmain section we relate this historical geographical sociology to the contemporarycontext to explore the adaptive capacity of neoliberalisation processes, which todate has been articulated unevenly across places, territories and scales in Bolivia.Once again, through an examination of the spatial-temporal ramifications ofeconomic restructuring we chart the attempts to engineer a new and emergentprocess of passive revolution and the efforts to resist this through the activities ofthe MAS. Within this second section, we also examine the state space of the MASin power and argue that the prime difficulties it faces are precisely the contradic-tions of space, especially the expression of differential space, or the right to newspaces of difference (see Lefebvre 2009 [1978]:248), embedded within theconditioning situation of uneven and combined development. The conclusion thenends with a set of reflections on how conditions of class struggle are inscribed inspaces of uneven and combined development in and beyond Bolivia through thepatterning of conditions of passive revolution.

The Legacy of the Bolivian National RevolutionThe Bolivian National Revolution of 1952 serves as a backdrop for modern stateformation in the country. It can be argued that the incomplete nature of theRevolution, in terms of creating modern capitalist social relations, provides anessential component for understanding contemporary political struggles, as wellas the spatially uneven and combined development of key departments withinBolivia.1 At the time of the Revolution, Bolivia sat alongside Haiti as one of thepoorest nations in the hemisphere (Dunkerley 1984:5). Although existing as an

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independent country since 1825, the conditions associated with moderncentralised state formation have been weak, leading to the persistence of regional-ism in dominating spatial questions of state and class identity. René Zavaleta(1986:111) has famously argued that two distinct spatial projects existed in Boliviafrom the time of colonialism onwards. These were “seigniorial space” (dominatedby hacienda owners with localist views of territory that were to be held for privategain) and, conversely, “Andean space” (dominated by indigenous conceptions ofcollectively held land, in which community, production and the sacred co-existed).However, a third spatial project began to arise with independence, namely that ofnational space driven by elites (Qayum 2002:286). Yet, following Gramsci(1971:418), we can argue that this was never a space of “national-popular” appealin the sense that a social force of organic cohesion between the majority of thepopulation and state classes was lacking in shaping dominant developmenttrajectories. Instead, linked to uneven and combined development on a globalscale, the more “advanced” modes of production induce “material and intellectualconquests” that are combined and assimilated albeit without repeating the sameforms of development because “a backward country does not take things in thesame order” (Trotsky 1980 [1932]:26–27).2 Indeed, in relation to Bolivia, JamesDunkerley (1984:6) has argued it was this conditioning situation of uneven andcombined development, leading to an advanced export sector alongside the back-wardness of the most predominant forms of production in agriculture, that was tocontribute to the tensions that would break out with the Revolution.Despite the poverty of its population, Bolivia was and continues to be a land rich

in resources. Indeed it occupied a central place in the evolution of the Spanishempire, with the silver mines of Potosí accounting for half the monetary stock inthe world (Dunkerley 1984:7). Following independence, Bolivia in the era of PaxBritannica (1815–1914) remained the world’s leading producer of tin. However,mining (the country’s most important export sector) remained an enclave economyand haciendas continued to expand in the countryside, preventing the shift tocapitalist social relations of production more broadly in terms of the creation of aclass of formerly free wage labourers. This left the nominally national space highlyparcelised due to the power of these centrifugal forces. The persistence of feudalrelations also left Bolivia with an underdeveloped internal market and a highlydependent relationship with the global economy (Qayum 2002:282). The liberalperiod (1880–1920) had resulted in the indigenous population being furtherexcluded from the dominant trajectory of development as haciendas expandedonto indigenous communal land, especially on the Altiplano (Lazar 2008:15). Priorto the outbreak of the Revolution, Bolivia was dominated by an oligarchic miningsuperstate (superestado minero), also known as La Rosca, in which just three familiescontrolled 80% of national exports (Dunkerley 1984:6–7). A combination of thenationalism engendered by the Chaco War with Paraguay (1932–1935) and fallingtin prices on the world market served to undermine the basis of oligarchic powerand helped to precipitate the Revolution in Bolivia that broke out in 1952.After Mexico, Bolivia was the second Latin American country to experience a

Revolution in the twentieth century. Vice President Álvaro García Linera (2007:1)has rather romantically argued that the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario

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(MNR: Revolutionary Nationalist Movement) “was to make its party program be-come an entire conception of the world as issuing from the state, leading to a moraland intellectual reform that enjoyed political and cultural hegemony throughoutBolivian society”. Yet, Alan Knight (2003) implicitly challenges this view bydocumenting how the revolution in Bolivia—although sharing some similar struc-tural characteristics—departed from the one in Mexico in important ways. Amongthe most salient dissimilarities, he lists ethnic differences (with Bolivia having a farhigher percentage of indigenous inhabitants), economic differences (with Boliviafar less integrated in terms of a national economy), and cultural differences(partially linked to economic differences but again resulting in Bolivia not havingsuch a strong sense of cultural integration). As a result, Knight (2003:57) concludesthat the 1952 Revolution, instead of being a fully fledged national phenomenoninstead was “prey to local, regional and cultural integration”. Drawing fromGramsci (1971:90), we can say that the Revolution of 1952, aimed “at the creationof a modern state … [but] in fact produced a bastard”. Bolivian state formation wasthus a highly incomplete process in the sense that hegemony was from thebeginning fractured and fragile, unevenly developed and spatially articulatedthroughout the national territory. It was a situation that reflected more the traitsof passive revolution in which the state tends to become the agent, even the guid-ing hand, in the moment of national unification and in the production andpartitioning of space (Morton 2011:18–24; Lefebvre 2009[1979]:130; Hesketh2010). Yet the nationalist agenda of the Revolution in Bolivia was undermined bythe weakness of state structures and their lack of authority within wider civil society(Domingo 2003). For example, the indigenous population remained largelyexcluded from full citizenship prior to the Revolution, in the sense of involvementin electoral processes, their exploitative employment status, low income levels andproperty ownership (Qayum 2002:280). Indians were even forbidden from enteringcertain streets (Dunkerley 1984:22). Adding to this spatial dislocation from national-popular sentiments was the fact that the state projection of social practices such as acommon language, history and memory through literacy, and an integrated nationaleconomy were lacking.This is not to say that the Revolution should be dismissed as unimportant. Indeed,

it must be emphasised that key political changes were introduced. Among the mostsignificant of these were the extension of the electoral franchise from 200,000 toover 1 million people through the granting of universal suffrage, which effectivelyserved to enfranchise the indigenous population and the peasantry (Dunkerley1984:50). In addition, the state managed to bind itself to space by partitioning,mapping, and transforming key relations of power, for example through thenationalisation of the vital tin industry. Here, the three big mines of Patiño,Hochschild and Aramayo were taken over by the newly formed state companyCorporación Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL: Bolivian Mining Corporation), meaningtwo-thirds of the mining industry was under state control (Klein 2003b:213). Theprinciple of co-government was also established, giving workers effective vetopower over government policy (Morales 2003:154). Importantly the hacienda asan economic unit and site of political power was challenged and with it thehacendado class. Finally, the Revolution declared education to be universal and free



and attempted to incorporate the Aymara and Quechua peasants into national lifethat together constituted some 65% of the population (Grindle 2003).Prior to 1952 Bolivia was an overwhelmingly rural society and a spatially

fragmented country in which the national state was not deeply present within thelives of the population. Land redistribution was also profoundly unequal, with just6% of landowners controlling 92% of all cultivated land (Klein 2003a:232).Moreover, Bolivia’s rural class structures were also highly feudal in nature withthe continuation of practices of personal service obligation (pongueaje) requiredfrom the indigenous population to landowners. A key achievement of theRevolution, therefore, was the fracture of this feudal class structure representing asignificant rupture in terms of initiating a transformation to capitalist society.Following the coming to power of the MNR in 1952, the Decree of Land Reformwas published a year later. This confiscated hacienda land and granted it to Indianworkers (with the provision that land was not to be sold individually). However, it isimportant to note that the MNR sought to preserve what modern sectors of agricul-ture there were. Therefore, capital-intensive farms were excluded from expropria-tion. Equally worth highlighting is that, in Bolivia, land reform was shapedthrough the slow transformation of large landholdings (haciendas) into capitalistenterprises, following the “junker road” (with the important exception of theCochabamba region), with landowning elites retaining control of the state. Thiscontrasted with the violent destruction of hacienda estates and the breakup of thedominant traditional landowning classes through revolution and land reform,following the “farmer road”, in Mexico (de Janvry 1981:106–109, 203–211; Lenin1962[1907]:241–243, 422). In the manner of the “junker road”, the BolivianRevolution was to significantly reorganise social property relations but in a mannerthat continued forms of class domination perpetuated through the expropriationand dispossession of peasants by large-scale capitalist enterprises. Hence the persis-tence of what Álvaro García Linera (2012b:15–26) has recognised as “patrimonial-hacendado power”, specifically in the geographical spaces of the Amazon region (inthe departments of Beni and Pando and the north of La Paz and Santa Cruz) thatstill persists today. Crucially for our discussion of the spatially uneven and com-bined dimension of development, one of the key regions where expropriation didnot occur on a large scale was the department of Santa Cruz, which would becomea vital site for investment, commercial expansion and capital accumulation (Klein2003b:217). As well as occupying a crucial role within the national accumulationstrategy after the Revolution, it has also been the key base of support for the mostreactionary of regimes over past decades and in recent years has been at theepicentre of opposition to the Morales government (Eaton 2007). An understand-ing of the spatially uneven and combined development of specific places withinan overall national social formation, produced as an outcome of the Revolution istherefore vital to understanding the contemporary politics of Bolivia, as shall befurther detailed later.Another significant outcome of such state-led accumulation as a hallmark of

conditions of passive revolution was the manner through which class dynamicswere absorbed. Of key importance to the success of the Revolution was the powerof the organised working class. In the wake of the Revolution, the Central Obrera

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Boliviana (COB: Bolivian Workers’ Central) was established. This would prove to beone of the most powerful bodies in public life and the most militant trade unionfederation in the world, with authority over the entire workers’ movement(Dunkerley 1984:43). The backbone of this was the Federación Sindical deTrabajadores Mineros de Bolivia (FSTMB: Union Federation of Bolivian MineWorkers).3 These workers constituted a key revolutionary vanguard, as despiteconstituting just 3.2% of the population they were responsible for 25% of GDPand therefore of immense strategic importance (Dunkerley 1984:5). The militiagroups established by the miners in fact had helped constitute the potential foran embryonic workers state. Post-revolution there was an explosion in unionisationof workers but unlike the similar situation in Mexico the largest and most powerfulunions were not subordinated to state power, but instead remained in confronta-tion with the state (Knight 2003:71). However, workers’ power was to suffer asevere setback after the military coup of 1964. Of crucial importance to note is thatdespite their strategic importance to the economy, the Bolivian working class neverfully developed their own national-popular right to space, capable of winning oversupport from the peasantry (crucial to any socially transformative project in thecountry due to their sheer numbers). The Revolution of 1952 therefore lacked animportant ruptural condition with global capitalism (Dunkerley 1984:52). Instead,the reforms in the countryside were designed and led primarily by the MNR andfunctioned more to destroy the feudal order than to construct a socialist alternative.The character of the passive revolution was therefore evident in how there was a“molecular” expansion of class relations in which the settling of state space wasconducted in a protracted manner (Gramsci 1971:109). Unlike Mexico, then, landreform in Bolivia did not involve the creation of collective spaces (such as the ejido)and therefore never went beyond bourgeois limits (Knight 2003:71).Following the land reforms, first launched in 1953, it has been argued that

significant sections of the peasantry became a relatively conservative social forcenot supportive of the urban working class (Klein 2003b:215; Morales 2003:169).In addition, the MNR sought to divide and rule subaltern classes via tactics oftrasformismo. Owing to the historical fragmentation of space and thus weaknessof any allegiance to the national state, this was achieved via the co-optation ofthe peasants’ unions (especially union leaders). The Confederación Nacional deTrabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CNTCB: Bolivian National Peasant Confedera-tion) was also created to ensure more and more unions became affiliated to theMNR. The Bolivian experience thus conforms to similar conditions of passive revolu-tion elsewhere in Latin America, characterised by new phases of class strugglebased on the state’s dominant role in production, its engagement with forms ofmass organisation, and the different types and consequences of land reform (seePortantiero 1981:161–171; Munck 1989:25–38). Yet this phase in Bolivian historymust be interpreted as a geographically specific strategy of passive revolution andtrasformismo, whereby radical class demands were displaced or defeated by thespecific road to capitalism, shaped through the slow transformation of largelandholdings (haciendas) into capitalist enterprises. Hence a “‘revolution’ withouta ‘revolution’” (Gramsci 1971:59) as the presence of “patrimonial-hacendadopower” remained in the geographical spaces of departments such as Santa Cruz.



Elsewhere, the overall outcome of the Revolution in Bolivia has been notably definedas an “incomplete” revolution (Malloy 1970). Our argument is that there was astruggle-driven dialectic of revolution and restoration which led to a process of pas-sive revolution. “The problem”, Gramsci stated, “is to see whether in the dialectic of“revolution/restoration” it is revolution or restoration which predominates”(Gramsci 1971:219). To answer this we must examine the spatial trajectory of classpower in Bolivia.Rather than securing autonomous power, subaltern class forces in the beginnings

of the Revolution entered into co-government with the bourgeoisie. The prioritisingof democratic rights by the MNR, in 1951, gained them not only working classsupport, but also that of the professional classes. Once in power, the MNR explicitlysought to reject the claim that they represented one set of class interests, insteadportraying themselves as representative of the workers and peasants against theoligarchs. Appeals to nationalism were then used to offset such a contradictoryclass alliance (Dunkerley 1984:41). Bolivia was thus in an anomalous situation.The new government was neither fully bourgeois nor fully proletarian (Klein2003b:213). However, in spite of the passive revolutionary tactics employed bythe MNR, the working class did manage to resist incorporation, resulting in anincomplete process of hegemony. Pilar Domingo (2003:376) argued that the“forces unleashed by 1952 culminated in a zero-sum conflict of irreconcilableideological positions”. We seek to develop this point further by arguing that whatoccurred in Bolivia within the conditions of passive revolution was an unstableequilibrium of compromises epitomised by the military coup of 1964.Domingo (2003:368) further claims that successive hegemonic systems have

been undone by competing ideological positions and worldviews within Boliviansociety. However, in contrast, we argue that the construction of a viable nationalhegemonic project failed in the aftermath of the Revolution in the sense that theMNR did not succeed in “integrating the people into the framework of the newstate” (Gramsci 1971:90). Rather, the outcome was one of an unstable equilibriumbetween class forces, temporarily resolved by the military coup of 1964. Referringto Gramsci (1971:219), this was “a historico-political situation characterised by anequilibrium of forces heading towards catastrophe”. This was exactly the case inBolivia where neither the bourgeois nor subaltern classes could establish a viablehegemony, defined in terms of their intellectual and moral leadership over the restof society. Let us now explore how this came about.By 1956 the economy of Bolivia was in crisis. Hernán Siles Zuazo, in his first term

as president (1956–1960), was thus faced with three choices: radicalising theRevolution through the socialisation of the economy; continuing to let inflation rise(risking a right-wing coup); or turning outwards to the US for support to overcomethe country’s economic problems (Klein 2003b:220). Recalling the point madeearlier about the conditioning situation of uneven and combined development, thiswas a time of great geopolitical Cold War turbulence. The US had been involved inthe Korean War as well as seeking to roll back radicalism in Guatemala. WithMcCarthyism in full swing domestically in the USA, Bolivian plans to nationalisekey industries without compensation were anathema to their geopolitical interests.An immediate attempt was therefore made to curtail this form of transformation of

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state space. By the end of the 1950s, Bolivia was the largest recipient of US aidin Latin America and was the largest per capita recipient of US aid in the world(Klein 2003b:218). Such aid severely constrained policy options, confirming onceagain the point that revolutions do not occur in a geopolitical vacuum.Specifically, US interests were implemented via the so-called “Stabilisation Plan”

drawn up under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This planinvolved a reduction in government spending on areas such as food and socialwelfare as well as wage freezes and the firing of workers (Morales 2003:159).However, in response to this, the tin miners called for indefinite strike action as wellas an end to co-government. This demonstrates the unique character of the labourmovement in Bolivia compared with Mexico, or Nicaragua, in that its radical syndi-calist traditions allowed it to avoid complete co-optation (Dunkerley 1984:85, 89).Rather than the state managing to establish a minimal hegemony as occurred inMexico (see Hesketh 2010; Morton 2010), subaltern social classes in Boliviaremained intractably hostile to the project of the bourgeoisie. Fierce strikes byminers continued in the early 1960s, breaking the relationship between organisedlabour and the MNR, demonstrating the conditions of an unstable equilibriumheading towards catastrophe. One response to this was the mobilisation of thepeasantry as a counter force against the workers (Dunkerley 1984:116, Morales2003:170). With Víctor Paz Estenssoro’s (1960–1964) policies to disarm the minersand workers’ militia fragmenting the contradictory alliance that made up the MNRand his rule characterised by increasing coercion rather than consent, the army(spurred by its training in the notorious School of the Americas and given extensiveUS aid) staged a coup. This also led to the reversal of the democratic gains of theRevolution and the further contradictory consolidation of state capitalism.Henri Lefebvre (1991 [1974]:23) noted, in the process of modern state formation,

how the state comes to promote itself as the stable centre of political life, whichinvolves promoting its authority across space. The MNR had sought to achieve thisproject in Bolivia via a series of road-building projects that would further integratethe national economy, including key links between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz(Morales 2003:151). However, despite the intention to inscribe the territorial formof the state at the national scale, a number of differential spaces remained. Recallthat such alternative spaces of difference represent an antagonistic tendencytowards capitalist social relations by asserting a spatialised dialectic of territorialautogestión that aims to subdue state power (Lefebvre 2009 [1978]:250–251).Owing to the weakness of the national state form, peasant communities oftencontinued to run their own territorial spaces and have effective jurisdiction overtheir land and resources (see Perreault 2006:152). As Regalsky (2010:40) notes,“in short, they had effective control over the natural resources that conditionedthe daily lives and the survival of peasant families”. By extension, there existed inBolivia conditions of multiple sovereignty that were not overcome with the Revolu-tion. In some cases these political relations were in fact enhanced by the Revolution.For example power structures based on the hacienda were replaced by the ruralSindicato (union) which was to be the new means of interface between the country-side and the state (Dunkerley 1984:74). Although initially serving as the means bywhich the state sought to limit the activism of the indigenous peasantry and co-opt



them into a state-led transformative project, they have in recent decades been avital source of autonomous political power. This reminds us that as well as dealingwith passive revolutionary tactics from above, we always have to bear in mind thatthis is dialectically contested by subaltern classes from below (Hesketh 2013;Morton 2011:35–39). Crucially, these communal spaces came under attack follow-ing the shift towards neoliberalism in the mid-1980s, which sought to transformindigenous collective rights (usos y costumbres) into individual ones consonant withprocesses of capital accumulation. Capitalist social relations have increasinglyencroached upon the subsistence sector which has directly threatened people’ssurvival, precipitating renewed forms of struggle.

The Era of NeoliberalisationDuring the 1970s Bolivia’s economy underwent a period of rapid growth. Thecountry experienced radical changes to the economy in terms of road buildingand investments in commercial agriculture and state industries. In addition to this,tin prices almost doubled in the years 1973–1974 (Klein 2003b:227–229). Politi-cally speaking this era conformed to the southern cone model of development,led by military regimes that viewed democracy and economic modernisation as in-compatible. Under Hugo Banzer Suárez (1971–1978), foreign capital was givenpropitious conditions within which to operate in Bolivia. His authoritarian rule alsoallowed him to push through highly unpopular policies (required by the IMF), suchas massive devaluation of the peso (by 67%), as well as removing importantsubsidies on basic goods and services (Dunkerley 1984:210). This would lead tostirrings of discontent in the countryside and the beginnings of the rupture of thepeasant–military alliance that had been in place since the 1960s.Like many other countries in Latin America, chronic overinvestment linked to the

glut of petrodollars led to the accumulation of huge debts for the Bolivian state,especially during the Banzerato and period of rule by subsequent military leaders.The repayment of this debt was then disastrously renegotiated during the presi-dency of Luis García Meza Tejada (1980–1981) (Nash 1994:19). Bolivia’s economybegan a profound process of economic restructuring in the 1980s. Under HernánSiles, the solution to the country’s economic woes was to print more money, whichquickly led to spiralling hyperinflation. It was under the fourth and last Presidencyof Víctor Paz Estenssoro (1985–1989) that Bolivia fully embraced the economicmodelof neoliberalisation, whichwould come to characterise the country’s development forthe next 18 years.Shortly after re-assuming power, Paz Estenssoro issued his New Economic Policy

which mandated a severe austerity programme based on the “shock therapy”proscribed by Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs. Workers’ strikes in reaction to thiswere quickly met by the imposition of martial law (Morales 2003:207). The Bolivianeconomy was also devastated by the collapse of international tin prices in the1980s. Repression of the workers led eventually to the crushing of organisedlabour, with economic restructuring leading to the closure of 11 state-owned minesand the dismissal of 22,000 workers (Morales 2003:208). As June Nash (1994:20)notes, the closing of the tin mines altered forms of class mobilisation by increasing

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labour migration from mining to semi-subsistence activities in the corn harvest ofCochabamba, with some of the leaders of the tin miners also joining peasants inthe coca fields. This resulted in a shift from mobilisations rooted in the exploitativerelations of mining production to ones that were embedded in forms of struggle forsubsistence security on the land. We have already highlighted the weakness of statepresence in large parts of the country in terms of its ability to project power.However, this was further compounded with the transition towards neoliberalismleading to the further marginalisation and exclusion of large sectors of the popula-tion (Domingo 2003:367).In the countryside, the neoliberal era saw the gradual breakdown of the historical

pact between the state and peasantry as price supports were lifted and more andmore of the population sank below the poverty line. US-sponsored programs toeradicate coca also threatened what was left of the remaining lifelines. As Regalsky(2010:40) documents, this relates to the manner in which communal space hascome under attack with the structural adjustment programmes that were pursuedafter 1985. To assess the consequences of these neoliberal policies, our argument isthat a new emergent passive revolutionary initiative was developed that sought torestructure social relations while absorbing discontent and allowing the state tolead processes of renewal. Crucially, this involved the state conducting diversespatial strategies by seeking to decentralise decision-making in a bid to localiseforms of social protest. Drawing from Neil Brenner (2006:78) state space in thissense refers to “place and scale-specific ways in which state institutions aremobilised to regulate social relations and to influence their locational geographies”.The paradox of space is here conveyed through the Bolivian state engenderingsocial relations in space that are simultaneously homogenous and fractured.

Decentring GovernanceThe contradictory process of neoliberalisation in Bolivia was clearly fracturing thestate’s already questionable legitimacy and exacerbating difficulties of governability.As has already been noted, the state never managed to fully extend its hegemonyacross a national territorial basis. The response to increasing social protest, however,was a novel form of passive revolutionary tactics that involved state-based attemptsto restructure social relations by seeking to incorporate a limited degree of subalterndemands and diffusing other demands while expanding the process of capital accu-mulation. This can concretely be observed though the Law of Popular Participation(LPP) and the Law of Administrative Decentralisation (LAD), on one hand, and theLaw of Capitalisation on the other hand, promulgated by Gonzalo Sánchez deLozada in 1994. As Morales (2003:219) argued, these laws sought to “combine acultural and political revolution with the structural and economic one”. Together,these laws sought to extend neoliberalisation by promoting the marketisation ofland and natural resources while at the same time devolving decision-making tothe local level in a bid to transform peasant leaders into administrative positions.With regards to the Law of Capitalisation this essentially paved the way for theprivatisation of a number of state-owned enterprises including the vital hydrocar-bons sector. Where, previously, revenues from this industry were split equally



between the state andmultinational corporations (MNCs), state revenues were nowreduced to just 18% in some cases (Spronk and Webber 2007:33). The Law ofPopular Participation and the Law of Administrative Decentralisation sought todevolve centralised state power to 300 newly created municipalities, whilst alsotransferring 20% of the central government budget. Thomas Perreault (2006:156)illustrates the scalar contradictions at play in this process, as state administrationwas scaled downwards (with more decisions to be taken at the local level), whilethe country’s resources were opened to greater transnational involvement. Thiseffectively made the localised forms of decision-making meaningless, as the moreimportant decisions over the allocation of the key sources of economic power hadbeen removed from the democratic process. The Law of Popular Participationtherefore closely conforms to decentralisation policies, with the effect of fragmentingspace and political authority, which were implemented in lockstep withneoliberalisation policies. One consequence of this uneven development in theorganisation of space is that of transferring “the problems, but not the privileges ofthe central power to grassroots organisations” (Lefebvre 2009 [1979]:128–129). Thisis confirmed by García Linera’s (2007:3–4) view, that the LPP absorbed localindigenous leaders and activists and their organisational forms through a sophisti-cated process of co-option within bodies expressly created by the state, demonstrat-ing the essential traits of trasformismo.In addition, these laws also sought to put into effect a highly neoliberalised

version of multiculturalism, whereby greater political rights are granted but sepa-rated from their wider socio-economic referents. For example, the LPP recognisedthe status of indigenous communities, on one hand, whilst also rejecting theirclaims to be able to put into practice collective rights over their natural resources,on the other hand (Regalsky 2010:42). This must be interpreted, then, as a classicexample of boundary control, where there is an attempt to localise conflicts in orderto prevent them from being articulated across wider spatial scales (Gibson 2005).As Nancy Postero (2010:69) outlines, “although the Law of Popular Participationappeared to invite all citizens including indigenous groups to participate in localgovernment decision-making, in practice, it continued to reinforce the power andknowledge of the local elite. Political parties continued to control the local citycouncils, and whites and mestizos continued to control the political parties”. Thatwas until the organisation of the MAS.The origins of the MAS were in the indigenous peasant movements in

Cochabamba during the mid-1990s (Webber 2011:3). However, precursors to itsformation are to be found in the effects of neoliberalisation from the 1980sonwards. This restructuring led to the collapse of the dominant mining industryand large waves of migration to the countryside. According to Harten (2011:50)the population in the Tropics increased from tens of thousands of people to over300,000 people. Crucially, when linking this back to discussions about the weak-ness of national integration, Cochabamba was an area where state institutions wereweak or absent. In such a situation collective action was necessary to organise theconditions of everyday life, including the administration of agriculture and theregulation of land titles as well as the provision of education, housing, health andinfrastructure (Harten 2011:50). Uneven and combined development here thus

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spurred autonomous political organisation. The MAS was not formed initially as apolitical party in a traditional sense, but rather as a political instrument for change.This was to change however, post 2002, when electoral politics began to beprioritised. Coincident with this was the “revolutionary epoch” (2000–2005), whenleft-indigenous social movement activism was at its highest, protesting against theprivatisation of natural resources such as water and gas. The latter in particularprovided the spark for the formation of a national-popular movement of resistancethat removed two presidents from office and helped sweep the MAS to power.

Transformation or Trasformismo?The coming to power of the MAS in 2006 was supposed to represent possibilitiesfor genuine (revolutionary) transformation in Bolivia. This was the first time thatthe country had an indigenous leader that had been swept to power through a “po-litical instrument” of the indigenous movement’s own making (Harten 2011:7).Like the MNR, the MAS had as its aim the re-founding of the nation. However, thecrucial difference is that the MAS embarked on this aim in a manner that did nottry to transform Bolivia into a mestizo nation but rather recognised the country asbeing plurinational. The political horizon was marked by a “virtuous tripod”:plurinationality (indigenous peoples and nations in command of the state); auton-omy (territorial deconcentration of power); and a plural economy (state-articulatedco-existence of various modes of production) (García Linera 2012a:2). According toGarcía Linera (2012b:78), the Plurinational State represents a “historical bloc”aiming to “modify the content of the revolution in Bolivia as an anti-colonial, anti-neoliberal and democratic revolution with a socialist-communitarian horizon”. Itis marked by two “ethico-political” moments: the construction of the politicalvisibility of indigenous national identity; and the candidacy of Evo Morales that,together, have constructed an “urban–rural and cross-class identity united aroundan indigenous nucleus as the expression of the material certainty of its majority andits hegemony” (García Linera 2012b:80). The discourse of the government has alsobeen highly radical, with Evo Morales speaking at an international conference in2008 of the need to eradicate capitalism (Postero 2010:60). The real possibility ofovercoming the predicament of passive revolution via the construction of a national-popular hegemonic project therefore seemed to exist. Some important changes haveindeed taken place thus far. Greater control has been enacted over key nationalresources such as oil and gas (which had propelled the rise of social movementactivism in the first place). Significantly, a new constitution was proposed and passedby a national referendum in 2009. This constitution seeks to alter the state form bygiving it an increasing stake in economic relations and forms of “new extractivism”,as well as expanding indigenous rights and instituting a new round of land reform(Postero 2010:62). However, it has been argued that rather than inducing profoundtransformation in Bolivia, underMorales, the country has insteadmoved to accommo-date global capital through a “reconstituted neoliberalism” based on ensuring theexpansion of indigenous rights alongside neoliberal continuities (Webber 2013:170).In many ways this links to the problems of passive revolution discussed earlier in thefact that “relatively far-reaching modifications are being introduced into the country’s



economic structure… in competition with the more advanced industrial formations ofcountries” (Gramsci 1971:120). But the dialectic of passive revolution in Bolivia is alsopart of a political paradox shaping Latin America whereby insurrectionary strategieshave pursued emancipatory claims with appeal to the politics of “difference” andrights-based politics while demoting class politics. Consequently, a contradictorycombination of two processes has emerged: the state apparatus responds to the fluo-rescence of demands for new rights, ensuring limited entitlements and circumscribingidentities, while subaltern reactions pursue emancipatory politics through appeal tosocial and ethnic difference as a popular and wider form of resistance but at the riskof neutralising the dynamics of class conflict (Gledhill 1996:14–18; Hale 2004).The strategy of the MAS following the “revolutionary epoch” has been towards

electoral politics and an emphasis on winning over wider social class support whilemoving away from direct action. Prior to this, its strategy had been mainly concen-trated in extra-parliamentary activities and mass mobilisations (Webber 2011:3,44). However, due to their weak showing in the 2004 municipal elections, planswere developed to shift the Party’s composition and to attract wider state-civilsociety support (Harten 2011:88). This strategy had an important spatial dimensionto it in that it was an attempt to move away from being a regional political move-ment to one that was national, cross-regional and cross-class (notably requiringthe support of urban intellectuals) (Webber 2011:63). Crucially, however, this hasalso resulted in a watering down of the more radical social movements’ proposals.Rather than confronting the power of hacendado landowners and business inter-ests, it has been argued by some that, instead, Morales and the MAS have beenfar too concerned to seek their co-operation in creating a new Bolivia (Regalsky2010:36). Hence Webber (2011:9) argues that what we are currently seeing inBolivia is “the deepening and the consolidation of the initial trend towards areconstituted neoliberalism”. The latter term, “reconstituted neoliberalism”, itselfappears in a 2007 speech given by García Linera in also referring to the “point ofbifurcation” then facing the Bolivian state: meaning a potential collapse into eithera counter-revolution or state consolidation. Resolution of this point of bifurcation,García Linera (2008:29) stated, could come “through the repeated manifestationof the sovereign based on the relocation of powers, of local and regional forces,and the use of surpluses”, in order to do so. In other words, rather than profoundsocial transformation, the MAS has instead led a process of trasformismo throughits emphasis on electoral politics, meaning a creeping “molecular” social transfor-mation in which the progressive class has advanced in a compromised fashionwhile neutralising radical demands within the regnant state. This can be mostevidentially witnessed in the gas wars of 2003 and 2005. Here, as Webber(2011:70) attests, the MAS failed to provide revolutionary leadership and insteadbecame instrumental in shifting the momentum of the movement towards aconstitutional path. This has meant that a crisis of the state (a potentially rupturalmoment) has been overcome by the confirmation of state power, manifested inthe approval of the new constitution in January 2009. Moreover, in terms of theirplans for economic development the MAS have proven (thus far) to be less thanradical in its orientation. Instead, it has proposed a continuation of the export-econ-omy based on the “new extractivism” of primary products. The imbroglio in 2011

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over the proposed construction of a highway through the Territorio IndígenaParque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS: Isiboro Secure National Park and IndigenousTerritory)—a 3860 square mile reserve in central Bolivia collectively owned by theYuracaré, Moxeño, and Chimáne peoples—is indicative. The TIPNIS constructionaimed to integrate Bolivia’s Amazonian and Andean regions, through the construc-tion of a direct route connecting the Cochabamba and Beni departments, allied withcross-continental regional access to Pacific ports for Brazil. Yet it pitted highlandcampesinos and colonists (Aymara and Quechua) against the lowland indigenousgroups from the ecological reserve until Morales announced a reversal in an act ofgobernar obedeciendo (governing by obeying the people) (seeWebber 2012). Further-more, notwithstanding the populist rhetoric of Morales, nationalisation of thehydrocarbons industry has not taken place (despite this being a key demand ofindigenous movements) (Webber 2011:82). Nor has there been a nationalisation ofthe mines, leaving the global sovereignty of transnational capital intact despite thefact that the geopolitics of the “arc of power and domination” in Bolivia is seen tobe shaped more by the overlapping interests of foreign companies; the governmentsof developed capitalist countries; the hacendado-business classes in Santa Cruz; andnon-governmental organisations with clientelist ties to indigenous leaders (GarcíaLinera 2012b:89–97). Rather than being led by the demands of indigenous socialmovements, mobilisation has been channelled into supporting the project of theMAS. There is therefore the ever present danger of Morales following the same pathas the MNR in the aftermath of the initial impetus of the Bolivian National Revolution.Of course, indigenous rural and urban popular class forces are not lacking in theirown forms of agency and continue to resist the politics of absorption that is thehallmark of trasformismo. The words of Henri Lefebvre (2003 [1978]:99) are thus pre-scient here when he warns movements challenging the logic of the state againstfalling into what he calls “the triple trap of substitution (of authority for grassrootsaction), transfer (of responsibility from activists to the ‘leaders’), and displacement(of the objectives and the stakes of social protest to the goals set by the ‘bosses’who are attached to established order)”. It is essential at this juncture for theleft-indigenous movements to regain the initiative and prevent Bolivia from be-coming further enmeshed in the politics of passive revolution.A key source of conflict has been the attempt to overcome the chronic uneven

and combined development that has been further enhanced throughout thepost-revolutionary Bolivian state. Notable here is the split between the Media Lunadepartments (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija) in the east and those of theAltiplano in the west. For the sake of brevity, we focus here on the role of SantaCruz, the stronghold of the hacendado-business class, due to its importance interms of economic power and its intractable opposition to the project of theMAS. At the beginning of the twentieth century Santa Cruz was isolated andrelatively unimportant to national life (Klein 2003a:252). However, during the pe-riod of what Knight (2003:65) refers to as “revolutionary collapse”, between1964 and 1978, when Bolivia entered a period of military rule, the departamentovastly increased in economic and political power (Dunkerley 1984:223). It mustbe noted that this is not a region of Bolivia that is considered to be indigenousand, furthermore, it was not a region that was embedded within the revolutionary



tradition. Nor was it involved in the strategically important mining sector (wherethe most militant of workers were located). The presence of the MNR was thus weakin this region (Grindle 2003:6). Santa Cruz has since come to be a strategically vitalpart of Bolivia’s economy, accounting for around 40% of export revenue and 42%of the national state’s tax revenue (Webber 2011:90). Since the coming to power ofEvo Morales and the MAS it has also been a bastion of resistance to the new orien-tation of the government. The Comité Pro Santa Cruz has been a particularly impor-tant voice in arguing for autonomy for their departamento. Such demands includecontrol over natural resources, tax revenues and other policies (Webber 2011:90).However, in order to understand this “reactionary regionalism” we need to locateits production within the uneven dynamic of state formation following the Revolu-tion. As noted earlier, Santa Cruz evaded the main agrarian reforms introduced in1953 to the rest of the country. Furthermore, it would be a region that would cometo benefit enormously from the periods of military dictatorship as it was also thechief electoral backer of these regimes (Eaton 2007:77; Kohl 2010:109). Haciendasin the department were transformed into profitable agribusinesses to produce notonly for the national market but also crucially for export. As Eaton (2007:78) docu-ments, Santa Cruz received the majority of aid money and concessionary loansgranted by the US for development projects. Road construction and credit diversionfrom central government thus helped to create a modern capitalist agriculturalsector in comparison with other departments (Klein 2003b:249). Linked to devel-opments in the global political economy, it was to be the influx of petrodollars inthe 1970s and 1980s that provided further impetus to the development of theregion, spurring its agricultural export sector in products like soy, cotton and sugar.It is also the region where key hydrocarbon production is located, especially naturalgas (Kohl 2010:109). Neighbouring Brazil has also actively aided the department—as it did over the TIPNIS conflict in the Beni department in an act of subimperialism—in a bid to exploit its natural gas reserves.Santa Cruz has also been highly privileged within recent national accumulation

strategies. Owing to this position, it has been the main centre point for resistanceto more progressive initiatives. For instance, when Gulf Oil was nationalised in1969 by Alfredo Ovando Candía (1969–1970), despite its popular support amongstudents, the COB and oil workers, it was largely opposed in this department(Dunkerley 1984:196). Santa Cruz was subsequently the region from which HugoBanzer gained his major support base (Klein 2003b:228). The turn towards moremarket-friendly policies during the era of neoliberalisation, although having alargely negative effect on the western parts of the country, has had a largely posi-tive effect on the eastern departments owing to their export-oriented nature (Eaton2007:79). However, the coming to power of the MAS has threatened this privilegedposition with the government of Morales seeking to extend land reform to the east-ern departments. Elites in Santa Cruz have also been troubled by the anti-neoliberalrhetoric of Morales, and his plans to redistribute wealth in a bid to overcomehistoric problems of uneven development. This has been responded to in turn withincreased demands for Santa Cruz autonomy owing to the realisation that it hasmost likely been displaced nationally as a key social force (Eaton 2007). Efforts toincrease national control over natural resources has thus often provoked a strong

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regional backlash, or what has been termed “resource regionalism” (Humphreys-Bebbington and Bebbington 2010:147). Such a term refers to when a greaterregional assertion is made over the control of natural resources and the revenuesrelating to them. This issue raises complex questions about the appropriate scalefor a politics of participation and redistribution. For instance, Tarija, another depart-ment that has sought greater autonomy, produces 60% of the nation’s natural gas,but receives just 30% of royalties and hydrocarbon tax revenues. Even this figure isdeemed controversial, however, due to the fact that the department contains just5% of the national population. These questions clearly go to the heart, then, ofuneven and combined development and the difficulties inherent in trying to driveforward a process of developmental catch-up through the state partitioning ofspace. As García Linera (2012b:109) questions in relation to the spatial geopoliticsof the “new extractivism”, “is it not possible to use the resources produced by state-controlled raw materials export activity to generate the surpluses that can be usedto satisfy the minimum living conditions of Bolivians?” What also crucially differen-tiates this current moment from the Revolution of 1952 is the global nature of thecurrent crisis of capitalism (Regalsky 2010:36). The potential for challenging thedominant structures of power is thus greater at the present conjuncture owing tothe crisis within core states. A renewal of struggle in Bolivia by rural and urbanpopular classes has therefore never been more important.

Conclusion: “Rattling the Lid of the Cauldron of theState”Our argument has been that how modern capitalist state formation attempts toimpose itself on society and space can be fruitfully understood through thecategory of passive revolution and that this usefully captures the Bolivian experi-ences of revolution/restoration since the National Revolution. This “stratifying”tendency of power to homogenise social development animated Henri Lefebvre(1991 [1974]:23) when he noted how “the modern state is consolidating on aworld scale … imposing analogous, if not homologous, measures irrespective ofpolitical ideology, historical background, or the class origins of those in power”.As David Harvey (2003:101) clarifies, “the molecular processes of capital accumula-tion operating in space and time generate passive revolutions in the geographicalpatterning of capital accumulation”. Additionally, we have asserted the relevanceof a spatial understanding of conditions of passive revolution in aiming to over-come the neglect of the spatial logistics of the state in historical sociology literatureon uneven and combined development. Rather than an aspatial consideration ofunevenness, squeezed into a narrative of temporal sequences of backward andadvanced modernisation, we have attempted to inject greater spatio-temporalinsights into what we have termed an historical geographical sociology analysis ofpast and present class struggles in Bolivia. Hence the preceding focus on stateformation, class struggles and spaces of uneven and combined development inBolivia to reveal patterns of continuity and change within the historical geographi-cal sociology of conditions of passive revolution.



One can say that in Bolivia “the passive revolution here consists in the fact thatthe economic structure is transformed in a ‘reformist’ way” (Gramsci 1988:265).Yet, it is not adequate to envision a royal route, a path traced out in advance, lead-ing toward the condition of passive revolution as the fundamental experience ofour age. In any process of state formation there is carried within it merely the emer-gent possibility of passive revolutionary processes due to the contradictory strugglebetween class forces. After all, it might be said that one of the principal conditionsof history is the dialectical conflict of class contradictions, the outcome of whichcannot be mechanically expressed. This is so because within the thesis of passiverevolution “the ‘restorations’ need to be judged ‘dynamically’” so, therefore, “theconception remains a dialectical one—in other words, presupposes, indeedpostulates as necessary, a vigorous antithesis which can present intransigently allits potentialities for development” (Gramsci 1971:108, 114). Our argument hastherefore traced how capitalistic space in Bolivia has resulted in a series of transfor-mations that have been (and continue to be) both homogenous and fractured.At times, the state engages in a regressive partitioning of space that ishomogenised and tries to mask the conditions of struggle between social clas-ses. Alternatively, however, forms of class struggle challenge that same spaceby “rattling the lid of the cauldron of the state” through strategies of resistance(Lefebvre 1991 [1974]:23). Rather than resolving the contradictions of space, itremains to be seen how struggle in and against the state in Bolivia, as well ascapital accumulation on a global scale, will culminate in new patterns of passiverevolution including the presentation of counter-spaces of radical revolt andinsurrection from below.

AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank Cemal Burak Tansel and Phil Roberts for their commentson this paper. An earlier version was presented at the 16th New Political Science Confer-ence held at the Universidad de La Habana, Cuba (19–22 November 2013). We areextremely grateful to all the participants for their constructive feedback and support atthe conference. From our shared previous institution, we would like to acknowledgethe support of the Integrating Global Society (IGS) Research Priority Group and its‘academic champion’ Professor Jonathan Beaverstock at the University of Nottinghamfor funding in relation to this project.

Endnotes1 Departments are administrative/political subdivisions within which the country is divided into.2 The history of capitalist modernity expressed through conditions of uneven and combined

development should not be considered as an uninterrupted temporal sequence of stages.After all, as Trotsky (1980 [1932]:27) states, “the privilege of historic backwardness—andsuch a privilege exists—permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready inadvance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages”. It shouldbe stressed that the terms “advanced” and “backward” are not used normatively insignifying sociological features (Knei-Paz 1978:63–64).

3 The FSTMB, established in 1944, in fact explicitly drew from Trotsky’s analysis and soughtto apply this line of thinking to Bolivian conditions in their “Thesis of Pulacayo” (seeDunkerley 1984:17).

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Documents

Spaces of Uneven Development and Class Struggle in Bolivia: Transformation or Trasformismo ?