Published: Socialist Action 1986, reprinted with an
update in 1987
Source: Original pamphlet
Transcribed & marked up: Carl Jackson
IT IS one of the cruellest ironies of modern history that so many great revolutions have taken place in impoverished countries, where the resources have been lacking even to make a serious start in constructing the life of freedom from necessity which Marx saw as the heart of socialism. In addition, they have had to do without the aid which victorious revolutions in the industrialised west might have provided. In the postwar third world revolutions, regimes have emerged which sought to create a new society on the narrow base of the resources of their own countries. The results have ultimately disappointed many of their strongest supporters. China has lurched from one crisis to another, only to conclude with today's rapid journey along the "capitalist road". Cuba oppresses homosexuals. And the less said about Kampuchea the better.
Nicaragua is the latest experiment. After making a popular revolution of impressive scope, one which has maintained basic civil liberties and whose leaders have remained in close touch with the masses, the "new Nicaragua " has been declared by many inside and outside the country to have opened up a new road to socialism.
After visiting the country in June and July of 1985, I concluded that these claims were erroneous, and in this study I will attempt to put them to the test. The matter must not be posed as a moral question (the heroism and dedication of the Sandinistas is unquestionable), nor is it fair to measure contemporary social reality against the grander flights of FSLN rhetoric (Tomas Borge's talk of creating a "new man" in the here and now appears extremely overoptimistic once you have experienced the physical struggle for seats on a Nicaraguan bus). It is a matter of determining whether there are significant elements in the country's economic life which are moving it beyond the limits of the capitalist mode of production, and above all whether the structures of political power place the working class and oppressed people in control of shaping the country's destiny.
My contention will be that neither is true. The FSLN is rather operating within a capitalist and nationalist political strategy which can only condemn the revolution to slow degeneration. I will begin the discussion with a brief survey of the early years of the revolution. This will be based on easily available English-language sources (1) and is simply intended to provide a certain context for the main argument, which will look at the economy, the state and aspects of the class struggle in 1985.
A visitor to the museum of the revolution located behind Managua's Huembes market might easily draw the conclusion that the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship was entirely the work of a small guerrilla army. And one suspects that perhaps the designers of the museum had just such a message in mind. However it is far from true. The triumph of 1978-79 was overwhelmingly the achievement of the urban masses: the workers and the city poor.
In January 1978, following the murder of oppositional newspaperman Pedro Joaquin Chamorro there were violent demonstrations in Managua. A subsequent strike, initiated by the anti-Somoza elements of the bourgeoisie, so rapidly escaped their control that it had to be hurriedly ended. In February there followed an insurrection in Masaya's Indian suburb of Monimbo. Of the latter, George Black writes:
The Monimbo insurrection proved to the FSLN that the war between the people and the dictatorship would not always follow the timetable set by the revolutionary vanguard. The insurrection had begun spontaneously with barricades, but was quickly taken over with more systematic organisation by the people themselves…(2)
In the victorious 1979 insurrection the pattern was repeated. Here too, while the Sandinistas courageously provided a leadership which no one else could provide, "the will of the people to fight, whether or not a formal call for insurrection was made, determined the timing." (3)
These developments did not correspond to the FSLN's own expectations of how the revolution would develop. Sandinistas leader Humberto Ortega admitted frankly:
The truth is that we always thought of the masses...as a prop for the guerrilla campaign that would enable it to deal some blows at the National Guard. Reality was quite different: guerrilla activity served as a prop for the masses, who crushed the enemy by means of insurrection (4)
The different reality of the triumphant insurrection imposed a different political reality in the aftermath. The Sandinistas had originally elaborated a strategy for establishing a close alliance with the national bourgeoisie, who had largely moved into opposition to Somoza by the mid-seventies. They were encouraged in this course immediately after the victory by Fidel Castro and the Russians, who warned them that the expropriation of the bourgeoisie would expose them to imperialist retaliation (and probably also told them that Moscow was not prepared to pay the price for another Cuba). As Humberto Ortega put it:
The situation of Nicaragua must necessarily be seen in the context of the domination which imperialism continues to exercise over this continent, and so you can see why it is not in our interest to sharpen the contradictions.(5)
The first five-person governing junta established by the FSLN included the industrialist Alfonso Robelo and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, widow of the slain newspaper proprietor. And in the first cabinet, alongside a sole Sandinista (Tomas Borge) sat an array of representatives of the bourgeoisie.
But having made a revolution, the Nicaraguan masses were too unruly for such an alliance with the bourgeoisie to be easily consummated. Agricultural workers demanded and won major reductions in work loads. Urban trade unionists fought for wage rises. Never entirely trustful of the FSLN at any time, sections of the bourgeoisie responded to the radical atmosphere by moving into opposition. Within 9 months, Robelo had resigned from the government. The bourgeois daily La Prensa backed him and began increasingly to campaign against the regime. From May 1980 the efforts of the bourgeois parties went into building their own organisations.
The FSLN for its part soon realised that adjustments were needed, and began to lay the basis for a power structure more fully under their own control. At the time of seizing power, they had proposed a Council of State with a bourgeois majority. But not long after, they revised the proposal to increase the representation of their own mass organisations and decrease that of the bourgeoisie. In December 1979, the former National Guardsman Larios was removed as Defence Minister and replaced by Humberto Ortega.
In order to increase their strength vis-a-vis the capitalist class, the FSLN had to rely increasingly on mobilising their popular base. When capitalists abandoned their factories or began to run them down, workers were encouraged to take them over and run them under workers' control. The Sandinistas hastened to build their own unions to maintain pressure on the employers. The neighbourhood committees (CDS) were built into a powerful national network. The militias, initially disbanded, were revived as political tensions increased with the extreme right and as the election of Reagan in the US posed a new external threat.
Thus the FSLN found themselves relying more than anticipated on the mobilisation of the masses. Yet what they sought was very much a controlled mobilisation. They had not abandoned their economic strategy of maintaining a mixed economy and allowing the bourgeoisie to make profits. An uncontrolled mobilisation of the working class could threaten that strategy, and therefore the most militant elements in the labour movement had to be contained.
When a wave of strikes broke out at the start of 1980, in which the Communist Party and the Albanian-line Workers' Front had played a significant role, the FSLN decided to act. The daily paper El Pueblo, associated with the Workers' Front, was suppressed and the Front's leaders were jailed. Subsequently the Communists came under attack, with crowds of Sandinista supporters seizing their offices. Finally, during the state of emergency imposed in 1981 and not lifted until 1984, strikes were banned altogether.
The end result of this complex process was the consolidation of a regime with distinct bonapartist features. The state is beyond the control of the bourgeoisie, yet does it not manage a mixed economy in which favourable conditions are provided for private enterprise? The Sandinistas control the state, and claim to represent "popular power". Yet in what way do the people and in particular the working class actually direct political life? And what, if anything, does it all have to do with socialism? We shall explore these questions below.
As is well known, Nicaragua maintains a mixed economy, of which some 60 per cent is privately owned. While part of this private sector is made up of small entrepreneurs, the bourgeoisie also remains as an entrenched force, represented by the Supreme Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) and various political parties.
What is less well known is the extent to which the FSLN actively promotes the development of this private sector, providing a variety of forms of assistance and incentives. A study by the Central American Historical Institute notes:
During 1980 and 1981, the state financial system...helped with 100 percent of the requirements of the private sector in terms of working capital and investment, in contrast with the policies of the (Somoza) dictatorship which never financed more than 70 percent of these requirements... The distribution of foreign exchange was also favourable to the private sector. Between January 1980 and August 1981, 52.9 percent of the foreign exchange was distributed to the private sector. (6)
Consequently, as another pro-Sandinista source remarks: "objectively profits have recovered much more rapidly than wages." (7)
Such encouragement for private enterprise will remain government policy for the foreseeable future. The economic plan for 1983-88 indicates that the rate of profit is to be artificially maintained for industry through the course of the recession currently afflicting Central America. (8) To stimulate production, cattle ranchers and cotton producers are being paid for some of their output in hard currency.
The state sector does assume a considerable importance, despite representing a minority of the economy. It allows the regime to determine the pace of national development to a degree, both in the sphere of production and in that of finance (the entire banking system is state-owned). Yet an enterprise does not become socialist simply because it is placed in the hands of the state. The Nicaraguan state sector is situated within a market economy, and the Sandinistas themselves recognize the significance of this fact, though they often attempt to blur the issue. Consider for example Agriculture Minister Wheelock's comments in a speech to managers early this year:
Private production has its laws, and capitalism knew and developed then perfectly. We are clear that our enterprises are not capitalist, nor are they socialist enterprises because they are inserted in a market economy, an open economy which makes the law of value operate. That is to say, they are neither capitalist nor socialist. Simply, they are now forms of property and production...
Wheelock remained studiedly vague on the precise nature of these "new forms", but at another point in his speech gave the game away:
The state enterprises have to be models of economic rationality. They have to be profitable. They are not...enterprises to provide social services for the community. They have costs and they have to make a profit, and the costs are rising and so the prices have to go up. They have to be profitable to be able to meet depreciation costs for future investment…(9)
So Wheelock's "new forms" of production look remarkably like the old capitalist forms. The state enterprises are subordinated to the demands of profitability: pricing policy is dictated by market forces rather than by human needs, and tomorrow's investment depends on today's rate of return. The Nicaraguan state sector is thus best described as state capitalist.
The rural sector merits some consideration on its own in view of the extensive land reform programs which have been carried out. The landholdings of the Somoza family have either been taken over by the state or parcelled out to the peasants, as have some of the lands of other rich latifundistas, particularly where they were not being efficiently used. Between 1981 and 1984 some 2.4 million acres (nearly a fifth of the country's farmland) have been deeded to peasant families, and the process is continuing. In 1985 Enrique Bolaños, head of COSEP, had his land south of Managua seized in a move which aroused considerable hostility among the bourgeoisie. Bolanos was offered other land, (10) and the regime is clearly going to stop well short of liquidating the rich landowners as a class, but still the process of agrarian reform is fairly radical.
Nevertheless, the growth of a small-holding peasantry, even where it is organised into collectives, cannot promote a socialist dynamic in agriculture or a socialist consciousness among the peasants. It is an essentially capitalist measure, as has been well explained by the pro-Sandinista daily El Nuevo Diario:
The thing is to know whether the acts of expropriation are killing private initiative or whether, on the contrary, the basis is continuing to be established for a redistribution of property in order to multiply the number of individual properties...
Nicaragua was brought into the world market with the cultivation of coffee at the end of the last century and those families (who owned the land then) are more or less the same ones who continue to produce it in the Pacific region... It cannot be said that the majority of them have been an example of capitalist efficiency and modernisation. They have survived thanks to a labour force that was cheap, malnourished and living under very bad conditions...It is curious to note that thanks to the revolution, for fear of it, they have understood that if they don't overcome the old techniques of production they will end up losing their land, as a result of which they have become dynamic and efficient proprietors.
(Agrarian reform) is creating, not a collectivist consciousness of real socialism, but a middle class consciousness among the peasants, it is taking over and making its own the old unfinished project of Jose Santos Zelaya...the same as the project of the French Revolution. (11)
In short: the land reform is aimed at modernising agriculture, by unleashing the initiative of new private property owners, and by forcing the big landowners to become more efficient. This is undoubtedly a progressive step, and one of historic importance. But its capitalist character is undeniable.
The absence of a socialist mode of production in Nicaragua does not, in itself, disqualify the Sandinista regime from consideration as a state with a socialist direction. It is noteworthy that the original intention of the Russian Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution was not to carry out extensive nationalisations (though these were effectively imposed on them by events) and that the Bolshevik government later introduced a mixed economy in the mid-twenties under the "New Economic Policy". While Lenin sometimes referred to the state sector of his own time as "socialist" it is clear that he did not mean this in a very rigorous sense. His considered view, and in our opinion a correct one, was that a backward country cannot construct a socialist economy of the kind Marx had envisaged (i.e. an end to alienated labour) without aid from victorious revolutions in the industrialised countries. (12)
The Bolshevik orientation was above all political. The decisive step toward socialism which could be taken within the context of an underdeveloped country taken in isolation, was to place the working class in power. In this they were consistent with Marx's declaration that "the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy." (13) At this point, however, we encounter another fundamental difference between the Sandinista regime and socialism. The structures of political power in Nicaragua are essentially capitalist, and they quite clearly deny to the workers and more generally to the oppressed classes any real control over decision-making.
According to the Sandinistas' weekly paper Barricada Internacional, "Representative Rafael Cordova Rivas is convinced that Nicaragua's next constitution will be 'Conservative'." And the paper continues: "If the ex-member of the Government Junta and member of the Conservative Party, is implying that the Fundamental Charter of the Republic, to be passed by the National Assembly in 1986, will probably ratify the principles of political pluralism, a mixed economy and non-aligned foreign policy...then he is probably right." (14)
Certainly the present temporary governmental structures are compatible, not only with political pluralism, but with all the traditions of capitalist democracy.
The National Assembly was elected under universal suffrage. Its delegates serve for set terms and are not subject to immediate recall. In the electoral process the bourgeoisie with its great resources had a considerably greater weight than the proletariat as a class (though of course the FSLN claims to speak in the proletariat's name). Unlike the Soviet regime established at the end of 1917, there are no workers councils through which the proletariat exercises class political power.
This parliamentary system undoubtedly represents a huge step forward for a people previously oppressed by an autocratic regime. However it has no specifically socialist character apart from sporadic flights of rhetoric from the leadership.
Most sympathetic observers have conceded as much. They point, however, to other features of Nicaraguan political life which allegedly add a dimension of mass democracy. George Black, for example, speaks of the "seeds of genuine democracy" being "sown in the factories and farms, in the schools and barrios." (15)
There is no doubt that the mass organisations, such as the Sandinista Defence Committees (CDS), the women's organisation AMNLAE, and the Sandinista Youth are an important arm of FSLN political power. So, in a somewhat different way, are the Sandinista-controlled trade unions. The willingness of the leadership to regularly meet with the masses in "Face the People" ( De Cara al Pueblo) sessions at which complaints can be aired is laudable, and contrasts sharply with the elitist leadership style of Australian Prime Ministers, Liberal and Labor alike.
A closer examination of all the forms reveals, however, that the essential power relations are ones of control from above.
The leadership genuinely wishes to ascertain the views and desires of its popular base, and to this end President Daniel Ortega holds a "Face the People" session about once a week. Thus far these have been a real opportunity for people to express their views. However the decision as to whether to act on these views rests with the government, and with it alone. In recent months, critical comments at these sessions have increased in number, prompting the FSLN to complain about the making of "counter-revolutionary speeches" during the discussions and even to suggest that participants be got together to discuss the issues before the sessions get underway. (16) This is a first hint that if dissent reaches unacceptable levels, the ""Face the People" sessions will take on a more stage-managed character.
In separate interviews with the Sandinista Youth and with AMNLAE, I was told by representatives of both organisations that their main role was to support the decisions of the FSLN leadership. They spoke of a variety of ways in which people were mobilised to boost production and also to solve their own local problems, but it is clear that neither women nor youth as distinct groups have any decisive leverage in the political process. In fact the AMNLAE representative expressed considerable frustration with her organisation's inability to make headway in securing equality in the armed forces (women are not conscripted "even though we have proved we can fight" and are largely consigned to traditional female jobs in the army) (17)
The CDS are a very extensive movement, compromising some 50,000 block committees. They organise distribution of basic necessities at controlled prices and engage in ""revolutionary vigilance" (the latter is sometimes alleged to take on the dimensions of a "spy network" directed against ordinary people, but I regard that contention as unproved). But whatever their virtues, they do not make decisions about the main direction of their own work, let alone about the direction of government in general. This is quite clear from Tomas Borge's remarks to a mass meeting of CDS activists:
What has the National Directorate determined to be the principal task of the Sandinista Defence Committees? You have said it: revolutionary vigilance! Why did the National Directorate determine that the principal and fundamental task of the Sandinista Defence Committees would be revolutionary vigilance? To a great extent...because reality has shown that the main responsibility of Nicaraguans at this ominous hour is defence of the nation…(18)
Let us assume for the sake of the argument that this decision is a wise one. It is still openly stated that the decision was made, not by the committees themselves, but by the National Directorate, in whose selection the CDS have no voice whatsoever. We can now appreciate the full significance of the slogan, " "National Directorate give the order!" which is commonly shouted at rallies.
There is much talk of "workers' participation" and, occasionally, of "workers' control" in Nicaraguan industry. The impression is created that workers are gaining an increasing say in industrial decision-making. This is far from true. At one time there was real workers' control in many enterprises. This occurred for the simple reason that during and shortly after the revolution, numerous employers left the country or began to de-capitalise their firms. Workers were compelled to seize factories in order to keep them running, and often did so with the blessing of the FSLN. That, however, is now ancient history. All enterprises now have managers who are firmly in control.
Workers do continue to "participate", but that participation is strictly limited and its aim is primarily to incorporate the workforce into the never-ending drive for increased production. The "enterprise committees " which have recently received renewed attention by the FSLN consist of representatives of management, the workers, and the FSLN branch within the enterprise. In such a "troika" structure, the workers themselves have only a minority voice. And in some other structures they do not have even that. The book Participatory Democracy in Nicaragua lists among the " instances of participation" a National Council of Agrarian Reform whose participants include the responsible Minister, a representative of the union, the president of the farmers' and ranchers' organisation UNAG, two directors of bureaucratic bodies and a delegate from the Ministry of Planning. No rank and file worker delegates participate in this structure at all! (19)
Perhaps the closest thing to real grassroots democracy on the job is the periodic workplace assemblies which involve all the workers in a given enterprise. Yet the following report from the FSLN trade union paper Trabajadores indicates that here too, the democracy is largely nominal:
In recent days there took place a production assembly at CECALSA, where the director of the enterprise, Denis Lopez, made known the production plans of the firm for this year as well as individual and collective production goals. For its part the union made known the commitments of the workers to ending labour indiscipline, augmenting production, strengthening defence, and taking forward the innovators' movement with the standardisation of work. (20)
The boss does not ask but tells the workers what is to be done; the union pledges to keep the workers' noses to the grindstone. Similarly the book Participatory Democracy in Nicaragua lists various uses of these assemblies, which all boil down to keeping the workers informed. There is no mention of decision-making by the workforce. (21)
One final institution which deserves a mention is the "red-and-black " labour days (rojinegros), which constitute a program of unpaid, voluntary labour. One hesitates to estimate just how much of workers' participation in the rojinegros is genuinely voluntary and based on enthusiasm for defending the revolution, and how much of it is a product of various kinds of pressure. But even if we assume it is largely the former, it is still very clear how the decisions are taken. Consider the following government memorandum, announcing the initiation of a round of rojinegros for the Managua region:
As a form of practical support for the pronouncement of the FSLN National Directorate, two Saturdays per month will be worked voluntarily in the Third Region of the country. (22) (emphasis added)
The memorandum goes on to say that assemblies will be called to explain this measure to the workers; but it is not they who decide.
Austerity has been a watchword of the revolution since very early on, and necessarily so. Attacked on all sides by the hostile forces of imperialism, invaded by mercenaries and blockaded economically, the revolution inevitably finds itself calling on the workers and peasants to sacrifice, as so many revolutions have done before.
But the legitimacy of such an austerity program ultimately relies on the legitimacy of the regime. It is one thing for a government which represents the power of the working class to demand sacrifices from the workers. It is another entirely for such demands to be made by a regime beyond their control, a regime moreover which uses a significant portion of the surplus thus accumulated to boost the profits of the bourgeoisie and make payments to foreign banks.
Real wages have clearly fallen since 1979, as the Sandinistas themselves concede. The FSLN's own press estimates that real individual income fell by 50 percent between 1982 and 1984. (23) This was a result of the destruction caused by the process of insurrection, natural disasters, blockade and the contra war, rather than being the fault (at least in any immediate sense) of the FSLN's policies. Nevertheless it is a hard fact, and must be the starting point for considering the regime's most recent austerity measures.
In August 1984 the government partially removed subsidies on the prices of basic necessities, and in February 1985 they were abolished entirely. The consequence has been a wave of inflation. Wages are being indexed to keep up, but whilst a Sandinista official assured me in June that workers' buying power was thus being maintained, (24) the regime was admitting by November that this was not so:
During the first six months of the year, prices for basic goods rose 300 percent while the minimum wage increased only 165 percent. (25)
This is because the indexing of wages is based on official, controlled prices while in practice workers are often forced by shortages to resort to the free market, where inflation is worse. (The reader will note that if all the figures quoted on this page are taken together, a rather horrific picture of falling living standards emerges. I suspect the real picture is somewhat better. What matters, however, is that real wages have fallen significantly and are likely to keep falling.)
At the same time, the government has begun to whittle away at fringe benefits. The comisariatos, which operated within factories and sold basic necessities of life to workers at controlled prices, have been abolished. They are being replaced with large, centralised "supermarkets" which supposedly fulfil the same function. However it is not hard to see that the workers will lose on the new arrangement. They will not receive credit in the new centralised stores, whereas previously they could have purchases discounted against their wages. If they are dissatisfied with the performance of the stores, they will not be able to apply pressure the way they can on the factory floor. Moreover, the prices are likely to be higher, as they will include administrative expenses which were formerly accounted as part of the factory budgets. There has been a strike in protest at the changes, at Managua's Prosan factory.
In addition, the government has abolished the so-called "payment in kind " system (pago en especie). This was an arrangement through which workers could buy a certain amount of the products made in their enterprise at cost price. For example, the workers at Managua's Fanatex factory could buy 15 metres of cloth. Increasingly over the past period workers have used such purchases, not for domestic purposes, but for resale on the open market at much higher prices. In this way they supplemented their declining real incomes.
The FSLN argues with considerable logic that this practice worsens inflation and that it is politically corrupting for the working class, nominally the vanguard of the revolution, to be engaged in speculation. Nevertheless, the ending of "payment in kind" has meant substantial cuts in workers' incomes, and has provoked them to take strike action.
At Fanatex, industrial action forced management to review the matter, though in the end the abolition of the practice went ahead. In the aftermath of the strike an indeterminate number of militants were victimized, (26) and Daniel Ortega visited the factory along with an array of other top officials. When the workers challenged him on the issue, Ortega responded by attacking "ultra-left parties" calling themselves "marxists or trotskyists" who he said were allied to the right and were "strengthening the forces of imperialism." (27) In the aftermath of the dispute so many workers left their jobs at the plant that management attempted a speed-up drive to maintain production levels. (28)
At the E. Chamorro factory in Granada, workers occupied the plant at the start of June, only to be attacked by police backed by the local CDS, and physically ejected. (29)
While fringe benefits are under attack in the urban industrial sector, agricultural labourers are facing a speed-up drive. The problem arises from the fact that in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, the labourers and their unions demanded and got substantial reductions in their workload. Agriculture Minister Jaime Wheelock discussed this fact in a book published in early 1985:
In the case of the countryside in the period from the triumph of the revolution to the present day, we have noted...a tendency (for the workers) to obtain work norms much lower than existed previously. In sugar cane the reduction is around 40 percent, in rice 25 percent, in coffee about 60 percent, that is to say, a very great decline in labour productivity... The workers have to do twice or three times what they have been doing. (30)
The final remark was meant quite literally, and was reinforced in a speech to factory managers around the same time:
The (sugar workers) can't sow 600 shoots of cane as they are doing today, they have to sow the 1200 they sowed previously, and if possible they have to sow 1400 for the revolution. Because the Somoza regime got 1200 out of the workers. (31)
Speculation about the future of the Nicaraguan revolution is necessarily a doubtful business. There is a distinct possibility that it will be brought to an end, in its present form at least, by a military invasion. The Reagan administration is doubtless watching the political climate in Nicaragua closely, waiting for support for the FSLN to waver sufficiently to make an invasion viable. The revolution would then enter an entirely new phase of armed struggle with any number of possible outcomes.
It is also conceivable that the Sandinistas might take the "Cuban road ", expropriating the bourgeoisie within a bureaucratic framework. They are certainly anxious to avoid such measures, and would probably only resort to them if placed under extreme pressures by the United States such as a military blockade, and if offered much greater assurances of support from the USSR than have been forthcoming to date. (32)
In itself, the nationalisation of all the commanding heights of the economy would not necessarily represent a step forward for Nicaragua. It would place heavy demands on the Sandinista cadre, who would have to administer a greatly increased state sector, and would therefore probably have to rely very heavily on the more apolitical layers of the state bureaucracy -- to whom the FSLN would consequently have to make concessions in the form of increased salaries and privileges. This is the road to a bureaucratic ruling class, as in Cuba. (33)
At the same time, it would probably provoke the United States into extreme measures. It is hard to imagine Washington holding back from a full scale invasion.
The only context in which the expropriation of the bourgeoisie could point a way forward would be that of a total mobilisation of the masses, and in particular of the workers employed in the enterprises to be nationalised. This would demand a Marxist orientation to workers' power. Workers' control would have to be introduced on the factory floor, and the state machine would have to be reconstructed to empower the workers of town and country. Such a transformation of the power structures could raise the consciousness and militancy of the workers to such a degree that they would pose a formidable obstacle to any invasion. Workers' control would also vastly reduce the problem of bureaucracy. But as we have seen, it is light years removed from the political method of the FSLN.
It would, moreover, have to go hand in hand with an internationalisation of the struggle in Central America. Ultimately, US imperialism can only be defeated if it is confronted on many fronts. The FSLN would have to devote serious resources to backing the guerrilla movement in El Salvador, and to backing the workers' movements of the region. (1985 saw major mobilisations of workers in Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador -- all largely ignored by the Nicaraguan government.)
But an internationalisation of the struggle is likewise alien to the thinking of the Sandinistas. Their whole orientation is to trying to solve the problems of Nicaragua within the framework of a single country. To this end they anxiously seek diplomatic compromises which they hope will stabilise the status quo in Central America. Speaking of the Contadora peace proposal last year, Daniel Ortega remarked:
For us, it represents concessions. The situation we would be in after implementing the accords is very risky because we do not belong to any military pact while the other Central American governments are supported by the US government.
To accept this proposal is to put Nicaragua's security in the hands of the international community, especially of the European and Latin American countries. (34)
That is to say, Nicaragua's security would be placed in the hands of the bourgeoisie, who will only administer a peace plan if it contains revolution.
The only possibility of Nicaragua projecting an internationalist revolutionary strategy aimed at overturning the bourgeoisie of the neighbouring countries, would be if the small number of revolutionary Marxists in the country were able to build an alternative political movement and win the leadership away from the FSLN. Such a prospect appears very remote today. (35)
Leaving aside, then, the very real possibility of invasion from outside, the most likely scenario for Nicaragua is for the regime to remain on its present course. This course, as we have seen, means the regime is driven to attack the workers in order to prosecute the war and boost the private capitalists. It seems likely that over time this must lead to an erosion of popular support for the Sandinista leadership.
There is, in fact, a certain amount of discussion in Nicaragua today about the process of "wearing out" (desgaste) of support for the FSLN. Critics of both right and left told me in July that if elections were held at that time, the government would lose them. Such speculation appears fairly dubious at this stage, given the extreme weakness of the oppositional parties, which are quite literally incapable of governing the country. They lack the network of rank and file activists which is essential to the FSLN's ability to avoid economic and social collapse. Voters are not likely to opt at this point for an "alternative government" which could only survive with the aid of direct American military and logistical support. Nor are their memories quite so short as to forget the still impressive accomplishments of the revolution, or the barbarities of the regime which it replaced.
The rallies marking the sixth anniversary of the revolution in June and July, 1985 were quite large and proved that a solid core of support still exists for the Sandinistas. Still there is some sign that the leadership recognises the existence of a middle ground which is growing increasingly weary, and that even the active supporters of the regime cannot forever tolerate the decline in living standards. In the aftermath of the June 28 rally and march to Masaya, which commemorated a historic military action of 1979, the pro government press was so anxious to point to the indications of popular support that they really did seem to be protesting too much:
We should not make the mistake of believing the falsehood that the FSLN has declined in social power and has less mobilising power. This is a lie invented by the right and the reactionaries and which is only believed by themselves. Why should the vanguard lose its influence and mobilising power if it continues to base itself on the idea of the power of the people? (36)
Yet surely, if only the reactionaries held such views, it would not be necessary to polemicise against them at length, and over several days. In reality, while the vanguard might base itself on the idea of popular power, it does not base itself on the practice of such power. As a consequence, over time, support must erode. Tomas Borge conceded in mid-year that " undoubtedly there has been a drop in the number of people carrying out revolutionary vigilance," and said there was a need to "deal with tedium and listlessness" among the neighbourhood committees. (37) Toward the end of 1985 elections were held in some of the CDS as part of an attempt to restructure and revitalise them, but revitalisation will be difficult as long as they remain semi-state organs backing up a capitalist state in its attacks on the working class.
Meanwhile, an atmosphere of apathy has increasingly gripped the unions for similar reasons. Consequently, a trade union assembly was held on 6-8 September. In the run-up to this assembly, a process of consultation with the ranks went on and when the sessions began, the Sandinista union officials of the CST spurred the hopes of many rank and file workers with a "basic document" which reflected the demands which had been raised on the shop floor. These included price control, wage rises, better provisions for families and the like.
However when Jaime Wheelock's turn came to address the assembly he argued that the demands were impractical, insisting in classic conservative style that wage rises must be tied to productivity, while defending the dollar incentives being made to the bosses. Some rank and file delegates were prepared to challenge Wheelock, for example a woman health worker who contended that some of the incentives should go directly to the workers in the relevant enterprises, since it was they who produced the wealth. But with no section of the union leadership prepared to actually break with the FSLN on major issues, the end result was simply renewed discouragement among the activists. (38)
A serious decline in levels of support will inevitably lead the FSLN to draw closer to the bourgeoisie and state bureaucracy. The result will not, barring some unforeseen and dramatic development, be a journey along the "Cuban road," but rather one along the path taken by Mexico earlier this century. In an interview last year, Daniel Ortega was questioned about comparisons between Nicaragua and other revolutionary experiences. He carefully avoided comparisons with Cuba:
Perhaps the Nicaraguan revolution is something that can be compared to the Algerian revolution. In the context of Latin America, we would see it as being close to what the Mexican process has been (39)
The comparison with Mexico, while of course not exact, is nevertheless quite apt. The Mexican revolution was anticipated by bloody clashes between workers and employers in 1906-7, but the proletariat was as yet too weak and lacking in independent organisation to play a leading role in the drama that followed. From 1911 a vast rural movement fought for agrarian reform, and in the process destroyed the old social structures. A vacuum was produced, as neither the workers nor the bourgeoisie were sufficiently mature as classes to seize and hold the reins of power, while the peasantry as in all such cases was unable to form a government of its own. The vacuum was filled by one General Obregon, who constructed a regime based on the skillful incorporation of the working class. He offered liberalised labour legislation and union control of the telephone company, and by this means managed to mobilise the workers against the rural revolution.
Later in the thirties, as new upheavals threatened, his successor Lazaro Cardenas actively built trade unions and peasant leagues. His aim, as historian Arturo Aguiana explains, was to ensure that the masses were "organized 'from above’, channeled for the benefit of the ends of the Mexican bourgeois state." (40)
The result was a bonapartist state, ruled by the ""Institutionalised Revolutionary Party." Today this party rules over a consolidated capitalist society, in which workers are exploited and the economy as a whole is subordinated to imperialism.
Thus Ortega's Mexican comparison is portentous indeed. It foretells a likely degeneration of the Nicaraguan revolution into a Mexican-style capitalism with bonapartist features, in which an "institutionalised" revolutionary party incorporates worker and peasant organisations so as to buttress the capitalist state which the capitalists themselves are incompetent to administer.
Such a prospect, and all the criticisms one can make of the Nicaraguan leadership, do not of course diminish in the slightest our responsibility to display principled solidarity with the Sandinistas against imperialist aggression. They do however impose an additional responsibility. Serious socialists will display the same principled solidarity with the Nicaraguan workers when and where they come into conflict with a regime bent on imposing the logic of capitalist development on them. Not to do so would be to abandon the only force that is capable, potentially at least, of introducing a genuine socialist dynamic into the greatest revolution of recent times.
(1) All the facts referred to in this opening section appear in George Black, Triumph of the People, Zed Press, London 1981. This is the most comprehensive history to date, by a writer whose views are very close to those of the FSLN. Needless to say, the interpretation placed on the facts here is entirely my own.
(2) Black, p. 114.
(3) Black, p. 164.
(4) Quoted in Henri Weber, Nicaragua: the Sandinista Revolution, Verso, London 1981, p. 38.
(5) Quoted in Black, p. 197.
(6) Instituto Historico Centroamericano, "El Derecho de los Humildes: La Defensa de una Revolucion Original," Encuentro, Managua, 1984: 22.
(7) Estado y Clases Sociales en Nicaragua, II Congreso de la Asociacion de Cientificos Sociales "Carlos Manuel Galves", Managua 1982, p. 116.
(8) The plan is well summarised in Jose Luis Corragio, Nicaragua: Revolucion y Democracia, Editorial Linea, Mexico 1985, p. 43-4.
(9) Jaime Wheelock, "La Nueva Gestion Empresial: Eficiencia, Productividad, Rentabilidad," supplement to Informaciones Agropecuarias, Division de Communicaciones, MIDINRA, Managua, March-April 1985.
(10) Bolaños addressed the International Press Club in Managua on 26.7.85 regarding the expropriations, arguing that the land in question was not in an area of great land hunger and that the real motivation was a political vendetta against him. His arguments may contain at least some truth. While he was offered other land, it was of little use to him as his cotton mill was located next to the old land.
(11) El Nuevo Diario, 3.7.85.
(12) Eight months before the revolution he wrote that "the Russian proletariat cannot by its own forces victoriously complete the socialist revolution." Four months after it he said that "the absolute truth is that without a revolution in Germany, we shall perish." A year later he wrote that "the existence of the Soviet republic side by side with imperialist powers for any length of time is inconceivable." Quoted in Max Shachtman, "The Struggle for the New Course", introduction to Trotsky's The New Course, Ann Arbor 1965, p. 125. Of course, the Soviet state did survive. The argument, however, is that socialism in the Marxist sense was not built in isolated Russia, and that Russia today is state capitalist.
(13) "Manifesto of the Communist Party”, Marx/Engels Selected Works, International Publishers, New York 1968, p. 52.
(14) Barricada Internacional 20.6.85.
(15) Black, p. 188.
(16) Barricada 26.6.85.
(17) Interview with Sandra Elena Reyes of the Regional Propaganda Commission, AMNLAE, Managua 3.7.85.
(18) Tomas Borge, speech to CDS, published in Intercontinental Press 24.6.85.
(19) La Democracia Participativa en Nicaragua, Managua 1984, p. 126.
(20) Trabajadores, 2nd fortnight of March, 1985.
(21) La Democracia Participativa... p. 123.
(22) Memorandum from Ramon Cabrales, Minister of Internal Commerce, published in La Prensa 19.6.85.
(23) Barricada Internacional 5.12.85.
(24) Interview with Ramon Caceres, Department of International Relations, Managua 25.6.85.
(25) Barricada Internacional 5.12.85.
(26) I confirmed this personally in a discussion at the factory gate.
(27) El Socialista, ist fortnight of June, 1985. This is the paper of the Trotskyists. See note 35.
(28) El Socialista, 2nd fortnight of June, 1985.
(29) La Prensa 18.6.85. Article suppressed by the censor. Other journalistic sources confirmed the substance of the report.
(30) Jaime Wheelock, Entre la Crisis y la Agresion: la Reforma Agraria Sandinista, Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, Managua, 1985, р. 107.
(31) Jaime Wheelock, "La Nueva Gestion Empresial..."
(32) Barricada 29.4.85.
(33) For an account of the Cuban revolution and the Castro regime expressing views similar to mine, see Peter Binns and Mike Gonzales, "Cuba, Castro and Socialism," International Socialism 2:10, London, Autumn 1980.
(34) San Francisco Chronicle 6.3.85.
(35) The Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (Revolutionary Workers' Party -- PRT) which is most clearly committed to a perspective such as I've outlined here, boasts only 40-45 members. However, the comrades were quick to remind me that ten years ago, the FSLN itself had less than 100 members.
(36) Barricada 2.7.85.
(37) Tomas Borge, p. 379, 383.
(38) El Socialista, September 1985.
(39) San Francisco Chronicle 6.3.85.
(40) Quoted in Dan La Botz, "Mexico: How Today's Crisis is Rooted in Revolu-tionary History," Changes, Detroit, June 1983, p. 27. La Botz discusses in greater detail the points I've made here.