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Karl Marx Revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist Karl Marx. (more)

Karl Marx was born in the German Rhineland to middle-class parents of Jewish descent who had abandoned their religion in an attempt to assimilate into an anti-Semitic society. The young Marx studied philosophy at the University of Berlin and received a doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841, but he was unable, because of his Jewish ancestry and his liberal political views, to secure a teaching position. He then turned to journalism, where his investigations disclosed what he perceived as systematic injustice and corruption at all levels of German society. Convinced that German (and, more broadly, European) society could not be reformed from within but instead had to be remade from the ground up, Marx became a political radical. His views soon brought him to the attention of the police, and, fearing arrest and imprisonment, he left for Paris. There he renewed an acquaintance with his countryman Friedrich Engels, who became his friend and coauthor in a collaboration that was to last nearly 40 years.

The son of the co-owner of a textile firm with factories in Germany and Britain, Engels was himself a capitalist who helped to manage the firm’s factory in Manchester. Like Marx, Engels was deeply disturbed by what he regarded as the injustices of a society divided by class. Appalled by the poverty and squalor in which ordinary workers lived and worked, he described their misery in grisly detail in The Condition of the English Working Class (1844).

Marx and Engels maintained that the poverty, disease, and early death that afflicted the proletariat (the industrial working class) were endemic to capitalism: they were systemic and structural problems that could be resolved only by replacing capitalism with communism. Under this alternative system, the major means of industrial production—such as mines, mills, factories, and railroads—would be publicly owned and operated for the benefit of all. Marx and Engels presented this critique of capitalism and a brief sketch of a possible future communist society in Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), which they wrote at the commission of a small group of radicals called the Communist League.

Marx, meanwhile, had begun to lay the theoretical and (he believed) scientific foundations of communism, first in The German Ideology (written 1845–46, published 1932) and later in Das Kapital (1867; Capital). His theory has three main aspects: first, a materialist conception of history; second, a critique of capitalism and its inner workings; and third, an account of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and its eventual replacement by communism.

Historical materialism According to Marx’s materialist theory, history is a series of class struggles and revolutionary upheavals, leading ultimately to freedom for all. Marx derived his views in part from the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, who conceived of history as the dialectical self-development of “spirit.” In contrast to Hegel’s philosophical idealism, however, Marx held that history is driven by the material or economic conditions that prevail in a given age. “Before men can do anything else,” Marx wrote, “they must first produce the means of their subsistence.” Without material production there would be no life and thus no human activity. According to Marx, material production requires two things: “material forces of production”—roughly, raw materials and the tools required to extract and process them—and “social relations of production”—the division of labour through which raw materials are extracted and processed. Human history is the story of both elements’ changing and becoming ever more complex. In primitive societies the material forces were few and simple—for example, grains and the stone tools used to grind them into flour. With the growth of knowledge and technology came successive upheavals, or “revolutions,” in the forces and relations of production and in the complexity of both. For example, iron miners once worked with pickaxes and shovels, which they owned, but the invention of the steam shovel changed the way they extracted iron ore. Since no miner could afford to buy a steam shovel, he had to work for someone who could. Industrial capitalism, in Marx’s view, is an economic system in which one class—the ruling bourgeoisie—owns the means of production while the working class or proletariat effectively loses its independence, the worker becoming part of the means of production, a mere “appendage of the machine.”

Critique of capitalism The second aspect of Marx’s theory is his critique of capitalism. Marx held that human history had progressed through a series of stages, from ancient slave society through feudalism to capitalism. In each stage a dominant class uses its control of the means of production to exploit the labour of a larger class of workers. But internal tensions or “contradictions” in each stage eventually lead to the overthrow and replacement of the ruling class by its successor. Thus, the bourgeoisie overthrew the aristocracy and replaced feudalism with capitalism; so too, Marx predicted, will the proletariat overthrow the bourgeoisie and replace capitalism with communism. Marx acknowledged that capitalism was a historically necessary stage of development that had brought about remarkable scientific and technological changes—changes that greatly increased aggregate wealth by extending humankind’s power over nature. The problem, Marx believed, was that this wealth—and the political power and economic opportunities that went with it—was unfairly distributed. The capitalists reap the profits while paying the workers a pittance for long hours of hard labour. Yet it is the workers who create economic value, according to Marx’s labour theory of value, which holds that the worth of a commodity is determined by the amount of labour required to produce it. Under capitalism, Marx claimed, workers are not paid fully or fairly for their labour because the capitalists siphon off surplus value, which they call profit. Thus, the bourgeois owners of the means of production amass enormous wealth, while the proletariat falls further into poverty. This wealth also enables the bourgeoisie to control the government or state, which does the bidding of the wealthy and the powerful to the detriment of the poor and the powerless. The exploitation of one class by another remains hidden, however, by a set of ideas that Marx called ideology. “The ruling ideas of every epoch,” he wrote in The German Ideology, “are the ideas of the ruling class.” By this Marx meant that the conventional or mainstream ideas taught in classrooms, preached from pulpits, and communicated through the mass media are ideas that serve the interests of the dominant class. In slave societies, for example, slavery was depicted as normal, natural, and just. In capitalist societies the free market is portrayed as operating efficiently, fairly, and for the benefit of all, while alternative economic arrangements such as socialism are derided or dismissed as false or fanciful. These ideas serve to justify or legitimize the unequal distribution of economic and political power. Even exploited workers may fail to understand their true interests and accept the dominant ideology—a condition that later Marxists called “false consciousness.” One particularly pernicious source of ideological obfuscation is religion, which Marx called “the opium of the people” because it purportedly dulls the critical faculties and leads workers to accept their wretched condition as part of God’s plan. Besides inequality, poverty, and false consciousness, capitalism also produces “alienation.” By this Marx meant that workers are separated or estranged from (1) the product of their labour, which they do not own, (2) the process of production, which under factory conditions makes them “an appendage of the machine,” (3) the sense of satisfaction that they would derive from using their human capacities in unique and creative ways, and (4) other human beings, whom they see as rivals competing for jobs and wages.

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Bolivia is approaching elections that could lead to significant political changes, including the defeat of the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS) party after two decades in power, the decline of former President Evo Morales, and the beginning of a new political cycle with a liberal orientation.

The general elections, set for August 17, present a new political landscape for Bolivians. Morales will not appear on the ballot, and MAS could lose its legal status if it fails to reach the 3% vote threshold required by law. This comes after the party secured several past victories with more than 50% of the vote.

With this election, Bolivia could join other countries in the region that have recently shifted toward conservative leadership following left-leaning administrations, such as Ecuador under Daniel Noboa and Argentina under Javier Milei. Analysts speculate that liberal candidates could also win in upcoming elections in Colombia, Chile, and Brazil. In Peru, where elections are expected next year after President Dina Boluarte’s term, a candidate from her same political leaning may take office. These developments are seen as part of a broader rightward shift across South America.

For the first time, polls in Bolivia suggest that two opposition figures—right-wing leaders Samuel Doria Medina and Jorge Quiroga—could advance to a runoff.

Two key factors are driving the political shift. The first is the country’s ongoing economic crisis, characterized by a shortage of U.S. dollars, fuel scarcity, and inflation. These issues are largely attributed to Morales’s three presidential terms, from 2006 to 2019, and the administration of current President Luis Arce, who previously served as Morales’s Minister of Economy and was once credited as the architect of Bolivia’s so-called “economic miracle.”

From the mid-2000s, Bolivia experienced more than a decade of economic growth driven by high commodity prices, particularly natural gas exports to Brazil and Argentina. However, the government failed to invest in new exploration projects. As a result, Bolivia now imports most of its fuel, has stopped exporting gas to Argentina, and sends only limited volumes to Brazil. Government revenue from gas exports has declined from $5.5 billion a decade ago to less than $1.6 billion in 2024.

Once a net exporter of hydrocarbons, Bolivia has become a net importer and may even begin importing natural gas from Argentina—the same country that once relied on Bolivian exports.

The second factor is internal division within MAS, which has fractured into three competing presidential campaigns. The conflict escalated after Arce assumed the presidency following his 2020 electoral victory. Shortly thereafter, Morales began publicly pressuring Arce to enact specific laws and dismiss certain ministers. Arce resisted the interference and pursued his own policies, fueling tensions with Morales.

The confrontation deepened over time. Arce, through the country’s judicial system—widely considered subordinate to the executive—moved to strip Morales of control over the MAS party. The courts later ruled that a person cannot serve more than two presidential terms, effectively blocking Morales from seeking office again.

Recent polling indicates that most Bolivians now prioritize resolving economic issues, a development that poses challenges for MAS.

Regardless of the election outcome, the next administration will face difficult economic reforms. These include reducing a fiscal deficit that has hovered around 10% for years, increasing domestic fuel prices—potentially by as much as threefold—and negotiating with international institutions like the International Monetary Fund to obtain the foreign currency needed to stabilize external trade. Governing will be especially difficult for the opposition if it takes power after two decades of MAS rule, amid a worsening national crisis.

Nevertheless, opportunities for economic improvement are still present. A prime example is in critical minerals. Considered part of the “lithium triangle,” Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni contains the largest known lithium deposit in the world (around 21 million tonnes), but the country lags significantly in production capacity compared to its neighbors Argentina and Chile—due to the wrong decisions made by the Morales and Arce governments. Amid surging demand for lithium globally, if the president chooses to prioritize development in the critical minerals sector and works to attract foreign direct investment, the country could experience an economic boost, a potential $5 billion increase to its GDP.

Bolivia’s political environment may be facing a significant transition following these elections. No matter who is leading the country, the development that happens during the next presidential term has the potential to determine the country’s economic situation for years to come.

Raúl Peñaranda U. is a Bolivian journalist, editor of the news website Brújula Digital, and member of Global Americans’ International Advisory Committee. He received the Maria Moors Cabot Award from Columbia University and studied at Harvard.

Bolivia’s political chaos signals an economic meltdown

Bolivia faces a confluence of political infighting, external pressures and the risk of economic collapse as the 2025 presidential election nears.

A Bolivian protester shouts slogans against current President Luis Arce in front of police officers during a protest in support of former President Evo Morales on Jan. 13, 2025, in La Paz, Bolivia. © Getty Images

× In a nutshell Bolivian political chaos is worsening as Arce and Morales fight for power

Currency shortages, inflation and dwindling gas sales weigh on the economy

Reliance on Russia and China is growing and straining relations with the U.S.

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Bolivia is on the precipice of an economic crisis as it confronts shortages of hard currency and fuel, high inflation and dwindling natural gas production. Public anger has risen and street protests have become widespread. Yet, rather than presenting a united front against these challenges, the political elite is embroiled in chaos.

President Luis Arce (2020-present) and ex-President Evo Morales (2006-2019) are engaged in a bitter struggle for control of the leading political party, the leftist Movement for Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS), while confronting criminal scandals.

Whoever prevails will likely be the frontrunner in the August presidential election, after which the next administration will be forced to confront the country’s myriad economic and social problems while likely doubling down on its reliance on Russia and China.

Bolivia’s ruling-party power struggle

President Arce and Mr. Morales have been locked in an intra-party feud for most of Mr. Arce’s presidency. The two were once allies: Mr. Arce was Mr. Morales’ finance minister until 2019, when then President Morales ran for an unconstitutional third consecutive term. After allegations of fraud, mass protests and pressure from the army, Mr. Morales resigned and fled into exile. When presidential elections were held the following year, he selected Mr. Arce as the party’s candidate. However, following Mr. Arce’s victory, tensions between the two leaders emerged. In late 2021, MAS split into two rival factions: the Arcistas, loyal to President Arce, and the Evistas, loyal to former President Morales.

Both politicians aspire to run for president again this year. Mr. Morales faces resistance from President Arce, who is unwilling to act as placeholder for his predecessor. The conflict has fueled accusations of treason, corruption and drug trafficking between the two camps, dominating media coverage and fostering political divisions.

Troubled Bolivian judiciary

The judicial system’s dysfunction is a key element of the conflict. Globally, Bolivia is near the bottom in rule of law rankings, and partisan interests heavily influence judicial appointments. Judicial elections scheduled for December 2023 were postponed by one year amid widespread mistrust, adding to the country’s political instability.

Mr. Morales has sought to leverage his street-level support and legislative influence to undermine President Arce’s administration and has organized protests to pressure the government and challenge judicial appointments. Meanwhile, President Arce has used Bolivia’s politicized judiciary to block Mr. Morales’ political ambitions. In December 2023, the Constitutional Court ruled that Bolivia’s constitution prohibits more than two presidential terms, barring Mr. Morales from candidacy – a decision likely to be revisited by the reconstituted court. Seven of the court’s 26 judicial members remain as incumbents, while the remaining 19 judicial positions were newly elected on December 15, 2024.

Bolivia’s tensions put presidential candidates at risk

The tensions have spilled into violent and destabilizing events. In 2024 alone, there was a failed coup attempt against President Arce, a disputed assassination attempt against Mr. Morales and allegations that the ex-president raped a minor, to say nothing of the protests and roadblocks which have continuously paralyzed many parts of the country.

In June, the commander of Bolivia’s armed forces, General Juan Jose Zuniga, told a Bolivian television channel that Mr. Morales “cannot be the president of this country again.” He added that if Mr. Morales returned to power, the military would defend the constitution “at all costs.” Reacting to this in an attempt to uphold civilian control of the military, President Arce, who doesn’t want generals getting involved in politics, removed General Zuniga.

Bolivia lacks a strong opposition to capitalize on the ruling party’s disarray.

In response, in the same month, the deposed general gathered units and equipment, stormed the Plaza Murillo in La Paz and broke into the presidential palace. Despite initially overwhelming the area, the poorly organized rebellion quickly unraveled when new military commanders ordered the units to back down. General Zuniga was soon arrested.

Later, Mr. Morales accused President Arce of orchestrating an assassination attempt when, on October 27, Mr. Morales’ car was hit with multiple bullets, wounding his driver but leaving the former president unharmed. Former President Morales claimed he had been ambushed at a police checkpoint. Following the episode, his Evistas supporters took over several military barracks and increased their roadblocks across the country.

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Additionally, allegations of sexual impropriety have surfaced against both leaders, further inflaming public distrust. President Arce faces allegations of impregnating a job applicant. Both deny the claims, attributing them to politically motivated smears.

Despite these divisions, Bolivia lacks a strong opposition to capitalize on the ruling party’s disarray. The opposition, comprised of center-right Comunidad Ciudadana of ex-President Carlos Mesa (2003-2005) and Luis Fernando Camacho’s far-right Creemos coalition, is fragmented and discredited among the indigenous majority. The Arce government has held Mr. Camacho, the governor of Santa Cruz state, in custody since December 2022 on charges of bribery and “seduction of troops” for his supposed role in the 2019 forced resignation of Mr. Morales.

This vacuum leaves Bolivia’s political landscape polarized with no resolution in sight. As the August 17 election approaches, the power struggle threatens to deepen the country’s political and social instability. It underscores a broader governance crisis, with Bolivia’s weak institutions and politicized judiciary unable to mediate the escalating tensions.

Deteriorating economic conditions

A profound economic crisis has exacerbated Bolivia’s already tumultuous political landscape. The root of the financial meltdown lies in a severe balance of payment crisis. Since 2011, Bolivia has maintained a fixed exchange rate of 6.9 bolivianos to the United States dollar, but international reserves have since plummeted to $1.7 billion, one-tenth of their $15 billion peak of 2014. The Arce government is struggling to uphold the peg. Only $166 million in foreign currencies remain – the rest is in gold. Despite legislative changes allowing Bolivia to sell part of its gold reserves, further sales are constrained by a legal minimum reserve limit. This shortage of reserves – primarily driven by the government subsidizing fuel imports − has led the state to hoard dollars and gold, depressing economic activity. The fuel shortages that it triggers are further stoking social unrest.

International financial institutions have warned about the gravity of Bolivia’s fiscal challenges. Fitch Ratings downgraded the country’s default rating to CCC from B-, citing dwindling international reserves and the absence of a tangible fiscal consolidation plan.

With the foreign exchange reserve nearly depleted and economic risks mounting, a debt crisis looks imminent.

Bolivia faces mounting debt obligations as well. In 2026, La Paz must begin repaying the principal on its $1.85 billion of dollar bonds. With the foreign exchange reserve nearly depleted and economic risks mounting, a debt crisis looks imminent. This highlights the unsustainable nature of Bolivia’s current fiscal and monetary policies, which rely heavily on borrowing from the central bank to finance deficits.

Bolivia’s dollar shortage has had widespread ripple effects. The black market exchange rate is now over 50 percent higher than the official rate, and restrictions on dollar withdrawals have fueled de facto dollarization, which may send Bolivia on a similar monetary trajectory as neighboring Argentina. These factors, along with high inflation, compound the economic strain. Many experts argue that Bolivia urgently needs a currency devaluation, a comprehensive fiscal adjustment and foreign debt refinancing. However, such measures would be politically unpalatable for the entrenched socialist government, which continues to resist these steps.

Bolivia’s struggling resource extraction and reliance on Moscow and Beijing

The economic crisis has been exacerbated by declining oil and natural gas production, which has been a cornerstone of Bolivia’s economy. In 2023, oil revenues fell to $2 billion, a stark drop from $3 billion a year earlier. Similarly, natural gas exports to Argentina and Brazil decreased significantly, leading to a further reduction in hard currency inflows. Bolivia now imports more than half of its gasoline and 86 percent of its diesel. Although the government announced the discovery of a significant natural gas well in Alto Beni in 2024 and plans to invest $400 million in exploration, these developments are unlikely to provide immediate relief.

A view of the first industrial-scale lithium carbonate plant in the Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia, on Dec. 15, 2023. The area is thought to have the world’s largest reserves of lithium, a key component for production of batteries for electric vehicles. © Getty Images

The Arce government has already been reliant on China and Russia and now, with its economic troubles mounting, seeks an economic lifeline. To help monetize its untapped lithium reserves and develop lithium extraction and production facilities, La Paz has moved forward on controversial international partnerships that are raising potential security and economic concerns.

In 2024, Bolivia signed agreements with Russia’s Uranium One Group as well as the Chinese firm CBC Investments Limited to construct plants on the Uyuni salt flats. However, Bolivia has to finance the lithium exploration activities itself, and these projects face delays as they require legislative approval. Their long-term benefits remain uncertain. These developments follow China’s move into Bolivia and neighboring countries, which is challenging regional powers.

× Scenarios Bolivia’s multiple crises reflect a confluence of poor policy decisions, falling hydrocarbon production, inadequate fiscal management and external shocks. The next government will face a precarious balancing act: addressing immediate fiscal shortfalls without triggering political instability while implementing long-term structural reforms necessary to stabilize the economy. The Arce-Morales rivalry has deepened Bolivia’s troubles, delaying essential reforms and undermining public trust in political and judicial institutions. The outcome of this power struggle will likely shape Bolivia’s political landscape and determine its ability to address pressing economic issues in the years to come. Most likely: Anti-American political polarization and a currency devaluation The most likely short-term outcome for Bolivia is the persistence of its polarized and unstable political environment, with the primary fault line running between MAS’s Arcistas and Evistas. In a race between Mr. Arce and Mr. Morales, the winner will exercise control over the judiciary while the loser will likely face imprisonment. On the economic front, the devaluation of the country’s currency, the boliviano, is only a matter of time. Given the political sensitivity of this issue and the costs it would incur, President Arce will postpone this until after the election. Whoever wins, though, will have to confront the issue, so a devaluation is likely in late 2025 or early 2026. La Paz may also be forced to reduce subsidies and raise gasoline prices, which will likely provoke mass protests. Continued economic stagnation, coupled with the depletion of Bolivia’s natural gas reserves, will further strain public trust in government. Social discontent among urban middle classes, indigenous communities and the youth could intensify, leading to periodic eruptions of civil unrest. Any MAS government – with either Mr. Arce or Mr. Morales at the helm – will seek closer economic and diplomatic relations with both Moscow and Beijing while viewing the U.S. with suspicion, if not outright hostility. That will continue Bolivia’s current policy, as Russia and China are already key sources of investment for the country’s lithium industry, while Bolivia, like Cuba, recently gained “partner country” status in BRICS. Moreover, the Bolivian ruling party has long railed against U.S. influence in Latin America. The second Trump administration will view a socialist Bolivian government aligned with Russia and China as an ideological and strategic foe, as it does other left-wing governments in Latin America. Unlikely: Relative economic recovery A far less likely but still possible scenario is one in which the current and subsequent administrations impose some economic stabilization measures and leverage the country’s lithium deposits and gas fields to fight the dollar shortage and fuel scarcity. This could delay or mitigate the need for a currency devaluation. To quickly monetize the country’s lithium, YLB, Bolivia’s state lithium company, needs more international bids to develop lithium plants, and the government will have to attract international partnerships. Most likely, China and Russia would step in to pay down Bolivia’s deficit and restore its hard currency reserves, making La Paz still more subservient to the two foreign powers. Any economic recovery in Bolivia is contingent on political stability in which the socialist government would have to initiate dialogue with the opposition, civil society and business leaders while standing down in the internal party fighting. So far, neither President Arce nor Mr. Morales have indicated their willingness to do so. The dark horse: A pivot to the right An increasingly plausible scenario is an electoral shift toward the political right amid the ongoing economic crisis and a broader disgust with the Arce-Morales brinkmanship. If this were to occur, the country would still have to face its economic woes. However, it would pivot in its growth strategy and governance. Depending on which figure on the right wins the nomination, such a pivot could lead Bolivia closer to a worldview akin to that of Argentina’s President Javier Milei. A centrist or right-wing government would be much more likely to welcome foreign direct investment from the U.S. and the European Union, giving La Paz a short honeymoon period. Yet, this is still an uphill climb: MAS is by far the largest, most deeply rooted and well-articulated political party in the country, and no opposition candidate poses a significant challenge to President Arce or Mr. Morales. The opposition’s best chance at defeating the incumbent party is with a broad coalition that is able to appeal to disaffected MAS voters. To this end, ex-President Mesa, ex-President Jorge Quiroga (2001-2002), imprisoned leader Camacho and cement magnate Samuel Doria have all joined an informal alliance. However, the grouping will still need to choose its candidate, and it is up to the voters to determine whether this becomes a viable electoral bloc.

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Last week, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) commemorated the 30th anniversary of its armed rebellion in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. Despite the celebration with dance and music at its headquarters, the guerrilla group once glorified as a new beacon of hope by the prominent pseudo-lefts manifests all the symptoms of an approaching collapse.

Members of the EZLN during a National Indigenous Congress in 2017 [Photo by Mariana Osornio/Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

On January 1, 1994, about 3,000 Zapatistas armed with old rifles, machetes, and sticks took over ranches and a few towns in central Chiapas. Their commanders read out and distributed their “First Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle,” which proclaimed the goal of marching on Mexico City and deposing the federal government in order to win “jobs, land, housing, food, healthcare, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace.” Within a couple of days, however, the Zapatistas had been forced to retreat into the jungle and Chiapas highlands.

With the support of the Clinton administration, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari deployed 30,000-60,000 troops, fighter jets and helicopters that overwhelmed the guerrillas. The military resorted to indiscriminate bombings and summary executions, killing in total about 200 fighters and civilians. Global protests erupted against the onslaught, including a rally with over 100,000 that filled the Zócalo square in Mexico City, and Salinas declared a ceasefire on January 12.

“Peace talks” began the following month, with Zapatista spokesman and de facto leader Subcomandante Marcos declaring on TV the intention of “to transform ourselves completely into a peaceful, civilian political force.”. . He added: “The seizure of power? No. Just something more difficult: a new world.”

In 1996, the San Andrés Accords were signed supposedly granting sovereignty to the Zapatistas over the municipalities they gained control of in the jungle, but reprisals continued. The most famous aggression was the 1997 massacre of 45 indigenous people, including children, at a church in Acteal, targeting a human rights group sympathetic to the EZLN.

In 2001, right-wing President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) invited the Zapatistas to Mexico City, where they were allowed to march undisturbed and give speeches in Congress. A demilitarization and an Indigenous Rights Act granting watered-down rights to governance and resource use were agreed upon, but only partially observed by Fox.

Nonetheless, the EZLN gradually set up an indigenous enclave in the jungles of Chiapas, which remained dependent on aid from NGOs and visitors.

A balance sheet

The Zapatista uprising was scheduled for January 1, 1994, to coincide with the entry into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the US and Canada. During the previous decade, the elimination of subsidies, price floors and social programs, and other policies to “open up” Mexico to globalized capital threatened the livelihoods of laborers at plantations, along with the viability of small coffee, corn and bean farms in Chiapas.

A 1992 constitutional change allowing the sale of ejidos as a precondition for NAFTA was the last straw for the EZLN, which had succeeded in recruiting several hundred young peasant-laborers from the local Mayan communities.

The initial leaders were petty-bourgeois intellectuals who belonged to the National Liberation Front (FNL) guerrilla organization. In founding the EZLN in 1983, they decided to drop any mention of socialism and Marxism, instead peddling a mixed bag of Emiliano Zapata’s radical agrarianism and conceptions of local “self-government,” the guerrilla tactics of “Che” Guevara, liberation theology, and identity politics.

Behind their petty-bourgeois radical and eclectic rhetoric, there were definite political aims. As the spigots of political support, money and weapons from Moscow and Havana were drying up and finally closed with the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR, the former guerrilla movements agreed to “peace accords”—the 1986 Esquipulas Accord in Central America, the 1993 Oslo Accord between Israel and the PLO, among others—and turned themselves into bourgeois parties.

The Zapatistas never won a significant following among indigenous communities outside of a small region in Chiapas, and its greatest political impact was as a political prop for more established petty-bourgeois nationalist organizations in Europe, the US and Latin America.

Even within their territory, however, the experiment of local “autonomy” has nothing to show for it. Along with the rest of Chiapas, which remains the poorest state of Mexico, the EZLN communities have been dragged by the global capitalist crisis into the same storm of violence, repression, persistent deprivation and outward migration.

Last November, the EZLN announced the dissolution of its main political structures, the Rebel Autonomous Zapatista Municipalities and Councils of Good Governance, and the closing of its Caracol community centers to the outside public.

In a series of communiqués, it announced that, except for existing private plots, Zapatista land will become “non-property” or “common land” which explicitly will not be “ejidos”, a traditional form of communal ownership of the land combined with individual use of a few hectares at a time. Instead, it will be open for cultivation by non-Zapatistas, including several hectares for “national and international civil society.” The plan is for so-called Local Autonomous Governments (GAL) to manage these properties.

Removing the empty tag lines, this is a plan to set up a political structure that will encourage outside investors and increase proceeds for the Zapatista leadership, which already taxes individuals and imposes a 10 percent tax of agricultural income of families, according to a leaked military report. Among other initiatives to reach out to non-Zapatistas, their plan can be summed up as, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

While itself a sign of economic and political bankruptcy, it is unclear whether the EZLN still controls any significant territory or if it will be able to hold on to it. Thousands of youth have migrated, unable to secure decent livelihoods. Locals interviewed recently by the media and researchers say that the shut down Zapatista bodies had been unable to renew generationally, that aid from outside has dried out and that few or no Zapatistas remain in numerous communities.

This dissipation has encouraged the encroachment by drug cartels, the military and paramilitary forces tied to the government and landowner organizations. Last year, the Frayba Human Rights Center reported that thousands of families have been displaced due to the violence, which has included dozens of attacks against Zapatistas, along with the burning of schools and crops. Frayba writes: “These groups use exclusive army weapons and are uniformed.”

The EZLN blames current Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his Morena party, which rules Chiapas, for letting violence get out of control. They claim the government seeks “to justify military action to ‘cleanse’ the southeast and finally be able to impose its mega-projects,” in particular AMLO’s multibillion-dollar tourist attraction Tren Maya that the Zapatistas oppose for its environmental impact.

El Pais reported leaked internal documents of the Mexican military showing an even greater surveillance of the EZLN than the drug cartels, with one military report from January 2020 discarding any danger to the Tren Maya project, concluding that the EZLN simply does not have the resources to oppose it.

The EZLN leadership however has responded by isolating itself further and making appeals to the same capitalist government to defend it. The organization discouraged outsiders from attending the anniversary celebration, stating, “It is not safe.”

A petty-bourgeois nationalist trap for the working class

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), which publishes the WSWS, was alone in opposing the international pseudo-left’s glorification of this petty-bourgeois nationalist guerrilla movement.

In different documents at the time, the ICFI stressed that guerrillaism had resulted in “far too many defeats and betrayals”, disarming workers and paving the way for fascist military dictatorships. The infatuation with such movements by the 1990s had attained a deeply reactionary character.

“Rather than providing a revolutionary road forward for the Mexican workers and oppressed peasantry,” as stressed in a 1998 lecture by Bill Van Auken, the Zapatistas “have been converted into another instrument for settling political accounts within the Mexican bourgeoisie.”

In a piece on the march by the Zapatistas to Mexico City in 2000, the same author wrote:

“Their program of cultural and ethnic autonomy fits in with the orientation of those who see the answer to intensified exploitation of the working class by globally mobile capitalism as a restoration of economic power to the national state.”

By the late 1980s, the social austerity, privatizations and deregulation to better compete for this globalized capital had stripped the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had ruled Mexico since 1929, of any reformist veneer from a bygone era. The politics of the EZLN presented no real threat to these policies; on the contrary, its vague calls for democratization, autonomy and against corruption were exploited by numerous right-wing capitalist politicians like Fox and even a section of the PRI.

Only a few months after its armed action, the EZLN welcomed with honors and endorsed Cuahtemoc Cárdenas, the 1994 presidential candidate of the bourgeois Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD), who had recently left the PRI to give a new “left” façade to the discredited capitalist state. The EZLN would later declare its support for the governments of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and others in the so-called “Pink Tide” which had similar agendas.

María de Jesús Patricio, known as Marichuy, presidential candidate for the EZLN and National Indigenous Congress, 2017 [Photo by EneasMX/Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

In their last major political activity, in 2018, the Indigenous National Congress (CNI) and the EZLN selected María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, known as “Marichuy”, as their presidential candidate, refusing to back AMLO. The campaign was aimed above all at reviving their own image on the basis of identity politics, claiming for instance that she is “the poorest of the poorest for the sole fact of being a woman.” Facing the anti-democratic obstacles known globally to smaller parties, the mostly student activists of the Marichuy campaign gathered only 282,000 signatures nationwide, less than a third of the ballot requirement. This was seen as yet another sign of political crisis of the Zapatistas.

Briefly a model for the “New Left”

The vicarious thrill of armed rebellion, the rejection of revolution and the emphasis on indigenous and female identities pressed all the right buttons for the layers of the so-called “New Left” across Europe and America that had been radicalized in significant measure by Castroism and other bourgeois nationalist movements.

This milieu had settled into middle class lifestyles and professional careers and, by 1991, overwhelmingly embraced the capitalist triumphalism declaring “socialism dead” after the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR. Supporting the Zapatista cause as a new model of struggle became a way to cast a “radical” light on their promotion of identity politics and embrace of post-modernism, which provided ideological tools to better advance their careers and justify their abandonment of any association with Marxism. In exchange, the EZLN leadership got wealthy patrons, at least for a few years.

Having claimed that Castroism demonstrated that a democratic revolution or even socialism and a workers’ state could be achieved without the building of a Marxist party in the working class, by the end of the century these layers had become hostile to any movement that could seriously upset the stock market and the series of US-led wars that today have metastasized into a global conflagration.

The EZLN became the most celebrated example of the “radical democratic politics” advocated by figures like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Speaking for these ex-radical layers of the middle class, Laclau and Mouffe in their 1985 book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy advanced this as a form of “post-Marxism without apologies” that rejected any significant role for the working class in history, much less a revolutionary one.

However, the upper middle class continued to shift to the right and has now switched their red star Zapatista pins for AMLO hats.

The end of the infatuation with the EZLN was signaled by an article titled “Why we loved the Zapatistas,” which was one of the first contributions of the Democratic Socialist of America’s (DSA) Bhaskar Sunkara’s to Jacobin magazine after its founding in 2011. Speaking for the same middle class pseudo-left milieu, he argued that “we” loved the Zapatistas “because they were brave enough to make history after the end of history”—referring to Francis Fukuyama’s phrase depicting the end of the USSR— and “because we were afraid of political power.”

As demonstrated by trips last year to the region by Sunkara, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other leading members, the DSA has decided that they can better serve their interests by acting as de facto State Department envoys to the “Pink Tide” governments. A statement published last June condemning US media attacks against AMLO states: “The DSA International Committee stands in solidarity with the working class of Mexico, the MORENA Party, and AMLO in its ‘fourth transformation’ process.”

Beyond the militarization now being employed against migrants and the partnership with the fascist paramilitary bands attacking their former Zapatista friends, a foremost aspect of the AMLO administration has been the enormous accumulation of wealth by the bourgeoisie. During the first two years of the pandemic, as the country saw 605,000 excess deaths, 21 percent of new wealth went to the top 1 percent, while the poorest 50 percent saw just 0.40 percent, according to Oxfam. AMLO’s close ally, billionaire Carlos Slim nearly doubled his wealth to $105 billion since the pandemic began.

In a 1995 statement, the International Workers Bulletin, the predecessor of the WSWS, concluded:

“The events in Mexico demonstrate once again that the only way forward for the working class in the oppressed countries is to unite with their class brothers and sisters in the imperialist centers in a common struggle for the overthrow of capitalist exploitation and the establishment of socialism.”

This struggle requires the building of sections of the ICFI in Mexico and across Latin America on the basis of a careful assimilation of its historic fight against Pabloite revisionism and all petty-bourgeois nationalist opponents of Trotskyism. It is the continuity of this political struggle that explains why the IC was able to respond to the Zapatista rebellion with a correct, Marxist assessment that maintains all of its force and validity today.

A quarter-century ago, most Westerners assumed that communism was all but dead. A few stragglers (notably China) still clung to the label, but these were seen as the final foot-draggers, already in the process of shedding their repressive ways. Free and democratic societies were the new norm. The prevailing sentiment of the day was expressed very memorably in Joshua Muravchik’s 2002 Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. “After so much struggle, and so many lives sacrificed around the world,” Muravchik wrote, “socialism’s epitaph turned out to be: If you build it, they will leave.”

If only he had been right. With China doubling down on one-party rule, deepening alliances with Russia, North Korea, and Iran, and accumulating enough wealth and military might to represent a major global threat, Muravchik’s eulogy now seems premature.

He was right about some things, though. Autocratic regimes with centrally planned economies don’t persist because people like living in them. They are always deeply unpopular. Karl Marx claimed that capitalism would leave the working class miserable and marginalized, but in reality, it was communism that brought previously unimaginable levels of bloodshed, brutal repression, and mass starvation in its wake, even as Marx’s “immiseration thesis” was resoundingly disproven time and again across a kaleidoscope of cultures. The verdict is in: freedom is clearly better. So why is communism making a comeback?

This question frames Sean McMeekin’s impressive new book, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. It’s a wonderful read by an engaging writer with a deep knowledge of the relevant history. The 462 pages fly by. Readers may feel a certain dissatisfaction at the end, however, reflecting that they understand the first rise of communism considerably better than the second. This is understandable; like everyone else, McMeekin may still be reeling a bit from the geopolitical twists and turns of the last two decades. Who does understand this with confidence? What McMeekin can offer is a re-examination of communism’s history, with an eye to spying those genetic elements that have given it such unexpected longevity. It’s something.

The Rise

Communism’s surface appeal is not so hard to explain. The modern world has seen dramatic gains in prosperity, along with falling levels of social cohesion. Food and shelter are easier to come by today, but people crave solidarity and a greater sense of security. Communism promises both.

Muravchik’s book explored socialism from this angle, essentially presenting it as a political religion built on false promises. In his historical narrative, socialism looks a bit like a virus that becomes less lethal over time as it mutates and spreads. Beginning with industrial-strength Leninism and Stalinism, communism initially wrought horrific destruction, but in time it foundered against the rock of reality. Less radical solutions (labor unions, welfare) to its motivating problems undercut its appeal, and by the turn of the millennium, it had mostly petered out, with the mantle passing gently to social democrats like Tony Blair, who willingly gave thanks for the blessings of capitalism.

Today that narrative looks decidedly incomplete. Communism’s track record has not improved; it claimed 94 million lives in the twentieth century, and the horrific crimes of Stalin, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge (among many others) are now well-established in the historical record. These appalling numbers are not balanced out by any noteworthy success stories. Central economic planning doesn’t work; one-party rule reliably gives rise to political oppression. Nevertheless, a recognizable (malign) political tradition lives on, running from Marx through the Bolsheviks and Stalin, and continuing its evolution in China with Mao, Deng, and Xi Jinping. Whether we call it ”communism” or coin a new term, there is clearly a continuity to this story that merits attention.

In the Bolshevik takeover we see two of communism’s most important and defining features. It is immensely appealing to ruthless, power-hungry geniuses. And it feeds on chaos and human misery.

In attempting to trace that thread, McMeekin shifts his focus. To Overthrow the World is not a morality tale about the malign consequences of beguiling-but-bad ideas. Instead, McMeekin explores another recurring feature of global communism: brute force. He notes that communism never really wins over entire populations through persuasion. Communists do not win free and fair elections. Instead, their leaders court small, disaffected, and ideally well-armed groups, converting them into the shock troops that are needed to impose totalitarian control on a larger population. That grip is then maintained through fear, lies, and cronyism. Though the ideology stresses solidarity with the common man, the reality of communism inevitably involves top-down repression of the many by a privileged few.

Very few of the workers of the world wish to unite around that goal. Vladimir Lenin’s “vanguard” strategy compensated for that by allowing a chosen few to usher in a glorious new communist era, permitting the general populace to thank them later. He paired this with a strategy of “revolutionary defeatism,” wherein communist recruits were encouraged to undermine their governments or (especially) national armies in hopes that disorder and crushing defeat would open a space where communism could take root. Here, already, we see two of communism’s most important and defining features. It is immensely appealing to ruthless, power-hungry geniuses. And it feeds on chaos and human misery.

Lenin himself offered a master class in revolutionary defeatism in 1917, by courting German assistance so that he could return to Russia and sabotage her World War I campaign. Back in the (soon-to-be) USSR, Lenin fired up the German-subsidized printing presses and began blitzing the Russian troops with communist propaganda, persuading them to turn against their leaders. As her army imploded, Russia was forced to withdraw from the war, opening a path for the Bolsheviks to seize power. This turn of events was particularly stunning because, as McMeekin reminds us, the initial phase of the Russian Revolution had very little to do with the Bolsheviks. Lenin was in Switzerland when tensions between the tsar and other internal factions came to a head, and up through that point, Russia had largely been viewed by Marxists as a backward, reactionary country with limited promise. Lenin was never as such determined to bring proletarian honor to his own countrymen. He simply saw a crisis brewing, and pounced.

He paid the price for his cynical opportunism in 1918, when newly communist Russia was forced to sign the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty, relinquishing control of Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and the Caucuses. Still, the communists had their country, and luckily for them another catastrophic war was fast approaching that would enable Lenin’s successor to throw more than thirty million men into Hitler’s teeth, claiming dominion over the devastation that followed on this clash of totalitarians. Once again, the pattern repeats. Communism attracts men who are ruthless, depraved, and highly innovative. Just as Lenin leveraged the first World War for his ends, Stalin was able to leverage the second, positioning himself favorably to solidify power, regain the territory his predecessor had lost, and even cast himself as a global hero for vanquishing the mid-twentieth-century’s other ruthless tyrant.

The Fall

The Bolsheviks’ early days in power were rough. The bankers stalwartly refused to cooperate with the Revolution, so the newly-established communists were immediately forced to turn their attention to strikebreaking. Russians died by the millions of starvation and cold, to the point where Lenin permitted Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration to intervene in 1921 (undoubtedly saving a huge number of lives). It quickly became apparent that a centrally planned economy meant dysfunction, hunger, and shortages of more or less everything. A sober-minded Westerner visiting Russia in the early 1920s would likely have been amazed to know that Lenin’s crackpot experiment would ultimately span several decades, eventually holding 1.5 billion people, a fifth of the world’s population, in the Eastern Bloc.

But it happened. Communism’s survival owed something to the diabolical genius of leaders like Stalin and Mao, and something to the civil unrest, despair, and social weakness that they exploited so effectively. At times, they were positively entrepreneurial. Stalin had many global admirers after World War II, but when Western sympathies cooled, especially in the wake of the Soviets’ brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, communists looked further afield. New talent was found in Cuba, Tanzania, and Chile. By pushing Chiang Kai-shek into direct conflict with the Japanese, Stalin helped pave the way for Mao to take charge of war-torn China. Chinese communism in its turn precipitated the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, and spilled over into the astonishing crimes of the Khmer Rouge (communist fundamentalists who murdered roughly a quarter of Cambodia’s entire population). Say what you will about Pol Pot, but he was clearly willing to think outside the box.

A twisted logic seems to thread its way through McMeekin’s narrative: communist setbacks cause havoc, which in turn opens opportunities for new leaders with fresh, horrible strategies for keeping millions under tight control. Lenin’s “revolutionary defeatism” did not die with him. It is written into communism’s political DNA, giving it a zombie-like ability to keep pulling itself out of the grave. Midway through the book, it occurred to me to wonder as well whether communists don’t perversely benefit from the fact that under their regimes, maladroit politicians tend to be murdered by rivals before they get a chance to take the reins. The ones who make it have a certain ruthless cunning that democratic leaders often struggle to counter.

Not every day in the life of a communist society can be quite as terrible as November 4, 1956, in Budapest, or April 17, 1975, in Phnom Penh. There would be no one left alive. Even so, we should probably have been more skeptical of a narrative that presented communism as a force in gradual but definite decline. It seemed ascendant multiple times throughout the twentieth century. At all stages, it found Western sympathizers. It was often extremely successful at reaching specific identified goals: besting Hitler, building bombs, winning gold medals. Five-year plans are terrible, but sometimes they succeed by at least some metrics, because certain goals are more easily reached if one is utterly indifferent to the human cost.

Though Americans in general are far more worried about identity politics than geopolitics, a growing number of experts have warned: if the United States gets dragged into a war with China, it’s not clear we would win.

As McMeekin tells the story, communism is a kind of political predator, which seeks out weaknesses and takes advantage of them to assert itself more fully. Unfortunately, in a fallen world, there will always be suffering and weakness for predators to exploit.

The USSR did eventually fall, though, in an odd sense, the poison pill was dysfunction coupled with relative peace and prosperity. The Soviets overextended themselves, especially in Afghanistan. An older generation of leaders gave way to a new one that lacked the cold-blooded ruthlessness of communist predecessors. McMeekin does point out that Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika was initially meant, not as a gateway to liberalization, but more as a targeted strategy meant to facilitate his military ambitions. Even so, it’s clear that Gorbachev lacked the iron-spined depravity of a Lenin, a Stalin, or a Mao. Soviet weaknesses proliferated even as advances in technology and communications made ordinary people more aware of how much better life could be. The Berlin Wall crumbled, and so did the original communist empire.

The Second Rise

The final ten pages of To Overthrow the World are the least interesting. Looking specifically at repressive Covid-era policies in the West, McMeekin suggests that the Chinese are promoting communism in a new way, using their virtual influence to spread a softer kind of totalitarianism. This feels like a stretch. Covid was an aberration, and the parallels drawn in these final pages run contrary to the entire rest of the book, which vividly illustrates the enormous gulf between deficiencies of Western governance and the horrifying crimes of communism. Did state officials abuse their power in their effort to tamp down online debates about the origins of Covid? They did. Do these abuses belong in the same conversation with the Gulag and the Cultural Revolution? They do not. Even if the theory holds some measure of truth, it’s an odd, underdeveloped ending to an otherwise cohesive book.

This final non-sequitur is particularly curious because it’s not in any way needed to justify McMeekin’s arresting subtitle. Communism is rising again, in a far more “conventional” way. The Chinese were primarily responsible for the Covid epidemic, and they have committed serious human rights abuses at home while supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That’s all par for the communist course. But far from becoming a global pariah, the Chinese are building a deeper network of alliances, eyeing Taiwan, and flexing their muscles in Eastern Europe, the Pacific, and Latin America. Though Americans in general are far more worried about identity politics than geopolitics, a growing number of experts have warned: if the United States gets dragged into a war with China (which is possible), it’s not clear we would win.

It appears that the Eastern Bloc is back, and McMeekin’s book offers helpful historical context for making sense of that larger problem. Readers might come away more fearful, because the book reminds readers how resourceful and strategically brilliant communist leaders can be. At the same time, there are also grounds for confidence and hope. The Chinese, like the Soviets before them, have shocked the world with some of their targeted achievements: stunning manufacturing growth, incredible navy, and major advances in tech. Like the Soviets, they are obsessed with Olympic medals. But political repression carries heavy costs, as does invasive state control of the economy. Free societies generally do have the edge, so long as they can overcome one of their characteristic weaknesses: a penchant for crippling self-doubt, which in turn may inspire naive admiration for ruthless tyrants.

We see that in America now, and it divides us and weakens our resolve. Anyone tempted to admire Putin, Xi, or (must we really say this?) Adolf Hitler, should read To Overthrow the World, and remember why freedom is better. No one appreciates this as keenly as the unfortunate people who experienced the alternative.