Bolivia, Factory Workers - November 7th, 2021

Before the Congress of the General Confederation of Factory Workers of Bolivia (CGTFB)

The situation of the Bolivian factory workers fueled by the onslaught of the transnationals and the bloodsucking businessmen guaranteed by the Arce government is becoming increasingly adverse; today there are not only layoffs, but also factory closures, furloughs, absolute divestment in the factories under workers' administration whose objective is to bring back the slaver masters, reduction of wages, deplorable care in hospitals, meager pensions and the miserable increase to the national minimum wage of 2% in May celebrated by the senior staff of the COB bureaucracy that coexists in a "pacification" pact with the MAS, the Media Luna oligarchy and the OAS.
In this situation, hundreds of factory workers chew on such injustice and seek a revolutionary path that is neither from the hand of the popular front of class collaboration by the MAS of Arce, nor from the hand of the fascist Media Luna.

Down with class collaboration!
Unity from below to defeat the attack from above!
WE BOLIVIAN FACTORY WORKERS NEED A LEADERSHIP THAT REPRESENTS US!
LET'S FIGHT TO RECOVER THE COB FROM THE HANDS OF THE BUREAUCRACY!

Bolivia comes from being a link in the counterrevolutionary policy of imperialism that unleashed the Senkata and Sacaba massacres in 2019 with the fascist coup.
Today, almost two years after those tragic events, of the architects of this massacre of workers and peasants, the Arce government imprisoned Áñez, at the cost of releasing most of the fascists including Murillo, Camacho, Mesa and the officials of the killer army. Actually, the cowardly bourgeoisie of the MAS has not come to do justice as has been demonstrated so far, or to defeat the landowning oligarchy to which Arce has not touched an inch of land. In addition, his government continues to fatten the external debt with draconian interests in favor of the imperialists, as happens with the sovereign bonds that amount to a debt of 3,000 million USD not to mention the new debt with the IMF contracted by Arce for the value of 326.4 million USD, which brings to around 15,000 million USD the fraudulent external debt (more than 30% of the Gross Domestic Product) that they will seek to be repaid by the exploited.

This means that in the hands of the Arce government, they have only been applying Biden's plan to submit the nation to imperialism that the Media Luna could not finish imposing with the coup leader Áñez because of the revolutionary struggle of the masses. Although, nothing is definite already.
Both Áñez and Arce close ranks and recompose their pact when stopping the mass uprising is their goal, as we saw in July and August 2020, when the masses sought to bring down the fascists of the Media Luna from power and that process was diverted as the same officials and the fascists put the MAS back into the government before the regime could fall by the hands of the masses. And now with a relatively controlled labor movement with the straitjacket of the union bureaucracy like Huarachi of the COB, the different bourgeois fractions are disputing the crumbs that fall from the multimillion dollar imperialist businesses,  as the blanket is too small to satisfy the bourgeois fractions in the midst of the capitalist crisis. That is why the Media Luna presses the government with "civic strikes" while the MAS plays its entire role in the popular front of class collaboration and empty-handed demagoguery to the masses to disorganize the workers and peasants' movement.
As the crisis of those above deepens, the policy of class collaboration of the COB leadership shows its sinister face, which will go down in history as one of the most treacherous in decades of struggle, since it doesn’t represent the suffering or the demands of the working class or the exploited and, on the contrary, they have only served to divide, subdue and surrender the workers' struggles, respecting the established bourgeois order and sweeping under the the carpet the struggle for justice and freedom of all political prisoners for the massacres of Senkata, Sacaba, the fight for wages, retirement, etc.
That is why we present the programmatic points to be considered to be taken by the militant factory workers of Bolivia on the way to set up a leadership that represents the broad precarizated layers of the labor movement and the exploited with political independence:
1. Break all subordination to the bourgeoisie in order to organize a unified struggle against imperialism and its agents of the Fascist Media Luna and the empty-handed Bolivarian bourgeoisie of the MAS now entrenched in the government.
FOR THIS, LET’S RECOVER THE COB FROM THE HANDS OF THE BUREAUCRACY TO PUT IT AT THE SERVICE OF THE STRUGGLE OF THE FACTORY WORKERS, AND OF THE WORKERS AND THE EXPLOITED AS A WHOLE! LET US CONQUER POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE! DOWN WITH THE "PACIFICATION" PACT SIGNED BY THE COB WITH THE MAS, THE MEDIA LUNA, THE OAS AND THE UN!
COB CONGRESS WITH 1 EVERY 100 ROTATING AND RECALLABLE DELEGATES FROM ALL THE FACTORIES, MINES, ALONG WITH POOR PEASANTS, HOSPITAL WORKERS, UNEMPLOYED AND OTHER EXPLOITED SECTORS WITHOUT BUREAUCRATS, OR ”WORKER” MINISTERS AND VICE-MINISTERS, ALL OF THEM PIMPS TO THE SERVICE OF THE BOURGEOISIE! LET US RE-FOUND THE COB OF 1952 WITH ITS WORKER AND PEASANT MILITIA UNDER THE LEGACY OF THE PULACAYO THESES!
2. Faced with the servile policy of "strengthening national industry" (import substitution) that the MAS government and reformist currents are raising, the workers say that we don’t defend the bourgeoisie, we workers defend ourselves with class independence, as we say in our struggles "The liberation of us workers will be the work of ourselves." That is why it is necessary to fight in self-defense for the immediate nationalization of any textile, ceramic, food, etc., factory, that furlough, lay off or shutters, without compensation and under workers' control, in the way of taking the entire branch of industry under workers' control without a penny of compensation to the bosses.
3. For a coordinating commission of all the factories under workers' administration to centralize the struggle. We are all Polar, Punto Blanco, Cerámica Victoria and all the factories under workers' management because it is a conquest of all workers!
4. Opening of the accounting books of all branches of production to demonstrate the millionaire profits of the bosses who handle double and even triple accounting using their supposed "crises" as blackmail and to deceive the workers. For the reduction of the working day and one more shift in all the factories so that the unemployed can go to work.
5. Expropriation of all minerals and hydrocarbons without compensation and under workers' control! There is the money to finance the factories under workers' control, invest in industry, decent wages, education, retirement and health. As long as the MAS government continues to refuse to expropriate the lands from the fascists of Media Luna, we workers must fight for the expropriation of the lands from that rancid landowning oligarchy to guarantee the land to the poor peasants. Open the road to the worker-peasant alliance!
6. Weld in the streets the alliance among the miners, factory workers, students and poor peasants to finish defeating the attack of the transnationals, businessmen and the government, with the General Strike. Enough of extending the terms to sold and corrupt leaders! Congress of the COB with grassroots, recallable and rotating delegates to elect a leadership that genuinely representá the workers and the exploited!

7. Life-sustaining and mobile minimum wage equal to the family basket according to inflation. 100% retirement according to the last salary.

8. Defend immigrant Bolivian workers who work in Argentina and Brazil in the "hot bed" textile factories. That they join the Federation and Manufacturing Confederation, with voice and vote in the expanded Manufacturing Federation and COB! The same class, the same fight!

9. Fight for the dropping of all charges on all factory workers prosecuted by the murderous Áñez government that the Arce government continues, as well as on the Vita factory workers prosecuted and massacred in the factory by the police under the government of the coup leader Áñez on October 5. 2020.
The demand for justice in the face of the Senkata and Sacaba massacres where two of our comrades from the Delizia and Polar factories fell is a banner of struggle of all the workers and exploited, that is why together with the victims we say: “Neither forgetting, nor reconciliation, or forgiving: JUSTICE! "
Jail for the murderers of the people! Dissolution of the police and repressive forces of the State! For self-defense committees to confront the fascist gangs that seek to get back on their feet such as the Kochala Resistance Youth and the Cruceñista Youth Union!

10. The factory workers come from a great tradition of struggle, so in 2010 they anticipated in the Workers' Class Congress (CONCLAT) in Brazil the perspective of fighting against the rotten bureaucracy and the scam of Morales' “Bolivarian revolution”, the Castroes, the Kirchners, etc., which means the looted, starved Venezuela today and the Cuba handed over to imperialism at the hands of the Castroes. The Bolivian factory workers were right! Today life has returned to give the verdict and it was clear that the Bolivarian bourgeoisies are cowards to confront imperialism, the Media Luna oligarchy, the Fujimoristas in Peru, the Macris in Argentina, but they are brave to imprison, repress and prosecute workers, peasants and exploited.

Its revolutionary tradition has also led the La Paz factory workers, framed in the principles of proletarian internationalism, to condemn the massacre of workers and peasants in Syria at the hands of the Gringos, Putin, al-Assad from Syria and Erdogan from Turkey, that are embodied in the resolutions of the 2017 La Paz Factory Workers Conference.
Strengthening this perspective of struggle and in the face of the onslaught of imperialism that has no homeland or borders in pushing the oppressed masses to unprecedented conditions of misery, it has become a question of life and death to fight alongside our class brothers from the unions and the unemployed of Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and all of Latin America, uniting in a CONTINENTAL CONGRESS to confront the imperialist voracity of Biden, all the transnationals, their government agents and against the lackey bureaucracies that seek to impose that the workers pay for the crisis and not the capitalists. Let's deepen proletarian internationalism! The same class, the same fight!

Liga Socialista de los Trabajadores Internacionalistas de Bolivia
(Socialist League of Internationalist Workers) of Bolivia
Democracia Obrera Bolivia (Workers' Democracy Bolivia)