A proof for possibility of the working class democracy?
Before the revolution the only valuable industry in Bolivia - the tin mines - was owed solely by three families of the so called "tin barons": Patino, Hochschild and Aramayo. The rest of the industry was owned solely by North Americans. The oligarchy was stupid, extremely conservative and falling in puppet dependency of the USA. This state of affairs irritated not only the workers and peasants, but virtually everybody, except the tin barons, of course.
In 1951 the parlamentary and presidential elections brought victory to the centrist party of the rare Bolivian middle class - the MNR (Movimento Nacional Revolucionario). The oligarchy arranged in response a military coup (the 173th one in history of Bolivia - no kidding). On April 9th, 1952 young officers seized key buildings in La Paz and declared a counter-coup, aimed to give power to the victorious party of the stolen election. But their forces were weak, and soon they began to loose fight, when the government called for loyal reinforcements.
Something unique happened them, something rare in world history: a general, nation-wide uprising. Tin miners, armed only in dynamite and catapults, seized mines and minning towns. Unarmed peasants expelled the landowners from their haciendas. Soon the loyalist army, surrouding the rebels in La Paz, found itself being surrounded by worker and peasant militias. Three days was enough for a victory.
After the revolution situation became quite interesting: the victorious party (MNR) had to share its power with workers and peasants, who occupied the whole coutry outside of La Paz. Among the tin-miners a dominant party was the Trotskyist POR (Partido Obrero Revolucionario). Under its influence workers of the whole Bolivia elected their own representation, the COB (Centrar Obrera Boliviana). The government was bipartisan from now on: typical institutions of a bourgeois democracy (parlament and president) cooperated with a national-level workers council.
This was probably the most serious experiment in a world's history towards a genuine workers democracy. It succeeded surprisingly good: there were certainly some conflicts between those two kinds of democratic institutions, and between MNR and POR. I won't surprise you: the bourgeoisie was victorious, as usual. But the fight was fought using purely democratic methods. After 13 years of sometimes shaky, but always constitutional and democratic rule, an US-inspired military coup ended the period of revolution. It was the longest time of constitutional rule in Bolivian history. This record was matched only recently (on last year, to be precise). And the best part is, that neither the "tin barons", nor the landowners ever regained their oligarchic position.