Speaker: Jeff Webber
Bolivia witnessed a left-indigenous insurrectionary cycle between 2000 and 2005 that overthrew two neoliberal presidents and laid the foundation for Evo Morales successful bid to become the countrys first indigenous head of state in 2006. Building on the theoretical traditions of revolutionary Marxism and indigenous liberation, Jeffery R. Webber provides an analytical framework for understanding the fine-grained sociological and political nuances of twenty-first century Bolivian class-struggle, state-repression, and indigenous resistance, as well as the deeply historical roots of todays oppositional traditions. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, including more than 80 in-depth interviews with social-movement and trade-union activists, Webber situates Bolivian developments within the wider Latin American turn to the left over the last decade. He pays particular attention to what he sees as the disjuncture between the revolutionary politics of left-indigenous movements in the 2000-2005 period, and the modest reformism of the Morales government over the course of its first term in office (2006-2010). Having described the ideological currents that are most alive in Bolivian politics and formal intellectual life under Evo Morales, the focus then shifts to political economy. The purpose here is to demonstrate why the development model implemented by the Morales administration over the entire four years of its first administration is best characterized as reconstituted neoliberalism. In order to understand the constituent parts of reconstituted neoliberalism, the paper first navigates through an extended, historical treatment of the declining legitimacy of neoliberalism globally, and the principal schools of thought and development practice in Latin America over the twentieth century, paying particular attention to structuralism, neoliberalism, and neostructuralism. Out of this we arrive at reconstituted neoliberalism in the present, and the way in which it has taken on a particular form in the Bolivian case.
Jeffery R. Webber is a Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. He splits his time between Europe, Canada and various countries in Latin America, where he conducts field research annually. He is the author of Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (2011), and a member of the editorial collectives of Historical Materialism and Latin American Perspectives.
This series of podcasts is taken from the Historical Materialism and International Relations seminar series convened by Alexander Anievas. The seminars are given at 5 pm on Thursdays in Seminar Room C, Department of Politics and International Relations.
The Historical Materialism and International Relations seminar series seeks to explore and develop the multiple points of contact between Marxist theory and international relations, most broadly defined. It does so with the double aim of investigating the critical and explanatory potentials of Marxism in the domain of international relations, as well as to probe what an engagement with ‘the international’ might contribute to Marxist theory. The seminar series is associated with the journal of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory and its forthcoming ‘Historical Materialism and International Relations’ book series.
For more information, please see the Centre for International Studies website.