Moving beyond capitalism is a universal task

Álvaro García Linera interviewed by Luis Hernández and translated by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer, Axis of Logic, 18 February 2012

LHN – You have governed Bolivia for six years. Has progress towards decolonization of the state really been accomplished?

Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera

AGL – In Bolivia, the fundamental fact we have experienced has been the change in role of the people making up the demographic majority in the past and today – the indigenous peoples. Previously, because of the brutality of the [European] invasion and the burden from centuries of domination, which permeated the outlook of both the ruling classes and the subservient classes, indigenous peoples were condemned to be peasants, toilers, informal artisans, porters or waiters. Now they are ministers (both men and women), deputies, senators, directors of public companies, constitution writers, supreme court magistrates, governors, and president.

Neo-liberalism and the new socialism

Speech by Álvaro García Linera, undated, 21st Century Socialism 

Allow me to cover three areas with you: how to distance ourselves from Neo-Liberalism, how the state relates to social movements, and socialism.

Indianismo and Marxism: The mismatch of two revolutionary rationales

Álvaro García Linera, 2005, Links

Over the last hundred years, five major ideologies or “conceptions of the world” of a rebellious and emancipatory nature have developed in Bolivia. The first of these narratives of social emancipation was anarchism, which managed to articulate the experiences and demands of urban labouring sectors linked to small-scale self-employed and blue-collar work and the retail trades. A presence in some urban working class milieus from the late 19th century, it enjoyed its greatest influence in the 1930s and 1940s.

State Crisis & Popular Power

Álvaro García Linera, New Left Review, 2006

Three factors define the functioning, stability and representative capacity of a state. The first is the overall framework of social forces: the correlation between the different coalitions, both dominant and subordinate, contesting the reconfiguration of what Bourdieu called ‘state capital’—the ability to influence decisions on matters of common import. Secondly, there is the system of political institutions and rules that mediate the coexistence of hierarchical social forces. In effect, this institutional framework is a materialization of the founding correlation of forces that give rise to a particular state regime, and the means by which it legally reproduces itself. Thirdly, every state depends upon a structure of common categories of perception, a series of mobilizing beliefs that generates a degree of social and moral conformity among both ruling and ruled, and which takes material form through the state’s cultural repertoire and rituals.