The remarkable success of Bolivian socialism | The perils of a Never Warren camp
Hello friends,
In this week's newsletter:
(1) An excerpt and link to my reported essay for The Nation about what I learned during my travels around Bolivia this spring.
(2) An excerpt and link to my column for Gen, a new Medium publication, about the potentially dangerous rise in anti-Warren sentiment among Bernie diehards.
(3) Odds and ends
(4) What I'm reading
The remarkable success of Bolivian socialism
A quick note: This is the first article I've ever written for The Nation, and it's very special to me for two reasons.
1) Bolivia is one of the most open-hearted and interesting places I've ever been in my life, and it was a thrill to finally write something based on my travels around the country for a month this past spring.
2) The Nation is a publication that contributed heavily to my political awakening as a teenager; it expanded my understanding of ideology, political economy and international relations, and helped counteract the way that the corporate press made me feel insane and alien. I didn't know it at the time, but reading The Nation helped contribute to my eventual realization that I ought to try and become a journalist. So having this article published there, and also seeing it rank as the most popular story on the website earlier this week (please permit this act of boasting given the occasion) makes me feel very good.
Here's the opening of the essay:
"As I strolled through the Bolivian village of Sahuiña on a bright afternoon in March, the loudest sounds I heard were bird songs. Nestled in the Andes mountains and perched on the secluded coast of a peninsula jutting into Lake Titicaca, Sahuiña is an enchantingly quiet place. It’s also an independent one: Thanks to many years of government decentralization across Bolivia, the village has a great deal of freedom to do as it wishes without answering to the state.
At its entrance a Wiphala flag, a seven-colored square representing the indigenous peoples of the Andes, flapped in the breeze. No national flag symbolizing the Bolivian republic stood beside it. As I crossed the hamlet, the people of Sahuiña chatted with one another in the local indigenous language of Aymara. They spoke slowly, walked slowly, chewed slowly on coca leaves. They boasted about the crisp air and the scarcity of crime. Most of them fished or farmed for a living, just as locals in the area have for millennia.
Sahuiña’s remoteness and self-reliant atmosphere make it easy to assume that national politics is of secondary importance to its residents: The village keeps to itself, moves at its own pace, and makes decisions about its own land. But the people there are in fact enamored of the self-described socialist who runs their country: Evo Morales.
Morales, the villagers pointed out, has invested in their community like no other national leader before him. Before he took office, the route into Sahuiña was rough and narrow; now, it’s paved and wide, making it easier to transport goods in and out of the area, and allowing children to be driven to school in nearby Copacabana. Before Morales, people would draw water from wells; now, they have running water in their homes. More recently, the government has financed the creation of a small hospitality center, composed of a dining hall and a few cottages, to encourage tourists to see Sahuiña as an outdoor getaway. (Undoubtedly Sahuiña’s most charming attraction is its collection of endangered ranas gigantes—giant frogs—that are kept in a makeshift conservatory on a floating island on Lake Titicaca.) And a small airport is currently being built with public funds in a valley near the village.
The people I met also praised the system of bonos, or cash transfers, that are given to parents of young students, pregnant women, and the elderly. “Compared to previous governments, our government takes us into account,” Simón Khantuta, a gregarious community guide, told me as we sat by the lake.
Sahuiña is an emblem of how life has changed for millions of ordinary Bolivians over the past 13 years. Since taking office in 2006, Morales, a former coca grower and labor activist, has nationalized key industries and used aggressive social spending to reduce extreme poverty by more than half, build a nation with modern infrastructure, and lower Bolivia’s Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, by a stunning 19 percent. For much of Bolivia’s majority-indigenous population in particular, his tenure marks the first time that they’ve lived above poverty and benefited from their country’s tremendous natural resources.
It’s now clear that a redistributionist agenda has not been ruinous to Bolivia’s economy. Far from it: During the Morales era, the economy has grown at twice the rate of the Latin American average, inflation has been stable, the government has amassed substantial savings, and an enterprising and optimistic indigenous middle class has emerged. Given the nightmarish economic collapse of nearby Venezuela—the right’s poster child for the evils of socialism—the idea that such a system can be the path to affluence and stability in Bolivia is remarkable. Its left-wing political trajectory, which began roughly around the same time as Venezuela’s, shows that socialist projects can help societies escape poverty, rather than condemn them to it.
“Bolivia might be the world’s most successful country that calls itself ‘socialist,’” Noah Smith, a center-left economics columnist at Bloomberg News, wrote earlier this year.
Nevertheless, Morales’s fate—and his legacy—are uncertain. In a 2016 referendum, he asked the public if he could scrap constitutional term limits in order to run for an extra term in 2019. He lost, but after winning a highly controversial legal fight in a sympathetic court, he’s opted to run for reelection anyway. This fall’s elections, which will take place on October 20, have raised questions of whether Morales has become yet another leftist leader who will undermine democracy in the name of economic revolution.
Morales’s clutch on power has angered many Bolivians, including parts of his indigenous base who view his next run as an act of flagrant corruption. But the president is hoping the strength of the economy will deliver him another victory, and he’s making pledges to continue fulfilling the vision that inspired his first run."
Read the rest here!
Bernie diehards need to remember that Warren isn't the enemy
Here's the opening of my essay for Gen:
"A panic is beginning to set in across Bernie World. Bernie Sanders is plateauing or losing momentum in the polls and a slew of recent surveys show that Elizabeth Warren is surging in early primary states and nationally, sometimes surpassing longtime front-runner Joe Biden. Warren even seems to be inching past Sanders in New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary where the Vermont senator’s huge margin of victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 set in motion his stunning performance in that year’s nomination contest.
Sanders supporters are particularly concerned about how Warren is outstripping him among very liberal voters, and are out in full force arguing against Warren’s policies and leftist bona fides. Writers at Current Affairs and Jacobin and prominent members of the leftist commentariat online have made pointed criticisms of Warren, painting her as a figure whose similarities with Sanders are illusory and suggesting she’s likely to tack to the middle while in office. On top of this, the Sanders campaign has loosened the leash on its campaign attack dogs, suggesting an informal non-aggression pact between the two candidates may be unraveling a bit.
This escalation could spell trouble for the left. Should Sanders, Warren, and Biden remain the top three contenders going into the primaries, a protracted and vicious standoff between Warren and Bernie could potentially split the progressive vote, and allow Biden — an incoherent and sleep-inducing status quo candidate — to coast to the nomination. An overzealous campaign to push for the one true leftie could backfire, and produce the worst possible outcome for the left in the general election.
As Iowa approaches, the far left would be wise to temper its yearning for a socalist White House, and to think strategically about the future.
This is not an argument for diehard Bernie supporters to preemptively capitulate, but rather to be clear-eyed about two realities: that a Sanders presidency would share quite a lot in common with a Warren one, and that Sanders is far from building the mass movement that he’s promised will fuel his political revolution.
Sanders supporters would be well-served by cultivating a political culture that encourages Sanders sympathizers to pivot to Warren if they deem it the best way to ensure a progressive wins their state primary, and that discourages Sanders from staying in the race if it becomes evident that he has no real chance of winning the nomination (in contrast to his decision to stay in it until the end in 2016)."
Read the rest here!
Odds and ends
I was invited to join The Only Podcast About Movies to discuss the Obama-backed documentary American Factory — and it was one of the funnest podcasts I've ever done: Spotify | Soundcloud | (And article I wrote about the film if you're interested.)
A couple tweets:
Warren has received two gifts in recent weeks: Bernie’s emergency surgery will raise questions about his stamina and longevity; and news about Joe Biden’s legal but still deeply corrupt Ukraine dealings could morph into his own version of the HRC emails and raise questions about his electability.
Ad Astra: earth-shattering sound editing; perhaps the chicest wild car case I've seen; and an embarrassingly heavy-handed story of a man's search for psychological freedom advanced by a series of nonsensical or meaningless plot points.
What I'm reading
The past 24 hours in Trump impeachment news, explained.
Zadie Smith defending fiction.
In New York, the far left Is targeting a close ally.
Lovely personal essay: What nobody tells you about dating a younger man
Strongly endorse this CNN legal analyst's argument that emoluments should be at the center of impeachment.
Mark Zuckerberg promises to "go to the mat and fight" Warren. (Matt Yglesias speculates on whether he'd use Facebook's news feed to protect himself against an existential threat.)
What if Donald Trump just happened by accident? (A new paper on the power of social cascades.)
Thanks for reading. If you liked this newsletter, please feel free to forward it to others or share it online. (You can find a permalink for sharing the latest post through social media on this page.)
If you want to give me any feedback or just want to share some thoughts, you can reply directly to this email and I'll be able to read it — and respond.
If this was forwarded to you or you caught this online: Hello! I'm a journalist and I publish notes on politics and society through this newsletter every week. You can sign up here and check out an archive here.