A Movement Towards or Beyond 'Statism'?

Evo Morales's MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) was elected on a campaign promise to reverse the damage wrought by twenty years of neoliberalism. He has followed through on many of his election promises foremost among them the promise to "decolonize" the state. Many of the ministers are self-identified indigenous and activists from social movements. While there is broad agreement that the MAS has made progress on the indigenous front, there is more debate on the left in Bolivia about how to characterize the MAS's development policy. In a recent assessment, Bolivian sociologist Lorgio Orellana Aillón argues that, at this point, the MAS is "neither nationalist nor revolutionary." But Orellana goes further to accuse that the MAS's development plan is also "neoliberal." This contention begs the question, however, what is "neoliberalism"? As Orellana points out, it is more than a set of economic policies. Neoliberalism is a form of class rule that emerged as a response to the crisis in western capitalism in the 1970s.