[The following article, entitled "The People's Assembly Must Grow From the Grass Roots," was published in the May 1-15 issue of Combate, the paper of the POR (Partido Obrero
- Revolutionary
Revolucionario Workers party, the Bolivian section of the Fourth International), from which we have translated it.]
At the time of the crisis last October [the attempted military coup October 4 and the popular mobilization that put Torres in power], we were the first to pose the need for creating an organ representing the masses. We called for a body through which the masses could express their thoughts and their aspirations, which could serve as a focus for their creative initiative and their revolutionary power. Our party's slogan was echoed by the rank and file of the unions and from there the idea reached the COB [Central Obrera Boliviana - Bolivian Labor Federation] and the Comando Politico del Pueblo [People's Political Command, a united-front formation that sprang up during the mobilization in October]. Today the Asamblea Popular [People's Assembly] is beginning to function. No matter what its limitations, the formation of this body represents a victory for the workers.
We must defend the Asamblea Popular from its external enemies, those who are trying to minimize it or refuse to recognize it, like President Torres.
But at the same time we must defend the Asamblea Popular from those inside it who want to run it bureaucratically and make it into a populist version of a bourgeois parliament.
The Asamblea Popular can have no role except as an organ of dual power. That is, it must not simply debate and watch over government functions; it must- as the expression of the power of the great masses of our peopledecide the basic questions facing the country and the workers. The Asamblea Popular must become a workers' and peasants' government, and we must fight both inside it and outside of it to achieve this. In this process, a political-military instrument will grow up alongside the assembly which can serve as the power it still lacks to enforce its decisions.
Therefore, the Asamblea Popular must be deeply rooted in the people itself. Delegates or representatives to the Asamblea Popular cannot be handpicked by the present bureaucratized leaderships. In every sector of the working class, among the peas ants, students, and white-collar workers, assemblies must elect the members of the Asamblea Popular by direct vote. And the ranks must have the right to recall their representatives when they do not do their revolutionary duty.
But at the same time, the Asamblea Popular must be a forum open to all the workers, to all the revolutionary activists. Only in this way can the entire people participate, expressing their concerns and their initiative. In this way the revolutionary dynamism of the masses will be the locomotive pushing the Asamblea del Pueblo (Assembly of the People] along the road of the socialist revolution. If this link to the living body of the masses is cut, the Asamblea Popular will become one more bureaucratized leadership, one more petty-bourgeois talk-shop.
We must surround the Asamblea Popular. We must impart to it the revolutionary heat of the masses and the proletarian force and aggressiveness needed to give the coup de grace to the moribund capitalist system. If the Asamblea Popular acts with this firmness, it will be the only government the masses will recognize.
Reformism, no; socialism, yes! A bourgeois army, no; a revolutionary people's army, yes! A bourgeois parliament, no; the People's Assembly, yes!
Prison Reform
The pastry department at Durham jail in England has been asked to bake lighter cakes. The request followed an incident in which a prisoner, apparently irritated by their weight, threw one at a jailer, sending him reeling and cutting his face. One jailer explained: "We want them to be less lethal weapons."
Master of Simplicity
Chinese followers of Mao Tsetung Thought have calculated that a knowledge of 600 characters is sufficient to read 92.6 percent of the words in Mao's most popular works. To read newspapers or magazines requires a knowledge of 2,500 to 3,000 characters.