The Sandinista revolution and mass democracy
The Reagan administration is redoubling its efforts to throttle the Nicaraguan revolution. It is using every conceivable means - black propaganda, economi boycott, internationally concerted diplomatic pressures, and military attacks by the contras. (1) In this de facto Holy Alliance against a people fighting for the right to decide its own future, the West European bourgeoisies, regardless of the differences they have, are not failing to make their contribution.
The West European bourgeoisies are offering "democratic" credentials to the more presentable representatives of the armed counterrevolution, such as Arturo Cruz, a former member of the Council of Government for National Reconstruction (JGRN). They are blocking credits vital for the development of the country. For example, the Social Democratic government of the Spanish state headed by Felipe Gonzales has just suspended a 7.1 million-dollar line of credit. (2)
Even Mexico and Venezuela are not hesitating to put pressure on the Sandinistas by cutting off oil deliveries. What is more, very strong pressure is being put on Mexico to endorse the Reagan Plan. In addition, the Inter-American Development Bank, owing to US pressure, has frozen a loan of 54.8 million dollars for agricultural projects (Financial Times, April 10, 1985).
exaggeration - reflects the imperialists' fear, which is shared by the ruling bourgeoisies in Latin America of the attraction of the Nicaraguan revolution for the exploited and oppressed masses of the South American continent. In fact, "the Sandinista people's revolution in its practice presents a democratic alterative for building socialism." (3)
Thus, on the international scale, the Nicaragua revolution is offering a hope, a hope that threatens imperialism. For this reason, the US and its acolytes are trying to strangle this people and its revolution. They are prepared to use any method to portray the regime as "totalitarian. Thing the can marianity and finally dare e " What is more, they do every Sandinista government to take self-defense measures. Their aim is then to present these measures as "proof" that the Sandinistas are following a "totalitarian" course. In this way, they are trying to create better conditions, in the United States in particular, for justifying military intervention of larger scope.
It is necessary to highlight the essential features of Sandinista "people's democracy," not only to clarify the simultaneity of the genuine democratic and social transformation of the society in Nicaragua but also to counter the campaign of lies that is being
This international conspiracy -Charles-Andre UDRY
Among the purveyors of negative propaganda dressed up with the sauce of "anti-totalitarianism," we have to take note of the signers of the appeal published in Le Monde on March 21, 1985. (4) They claim that they have been compelled to take up this job by their loyalty to "Western values." They implore the US Congress to accept Reagan's proposal to turn over 14 million dollars officially to the contras. This modest contribution, they say, would make it possible to save "the future of democracy" and fight "the dictatorship of a totalitarian party, the FSLN."
This collection of "intellectuals," among whom we find former devotees of Mao and Stalin, have the gall, or the foolishness, to call for escalating US intervention "to save democracy." The US Marines have already intervened four times in the history of Nicaragua, and on each occasion it was to prop up the power of imperialism and a dictator subservient to it — "a son of a bitch ... but our son of a bitch," Franklin D. Roosevelt once avowed with a cynical frankness. He was talking about the first Somoza, the father of the Nicaraguan dictator overthrown in 1979.
Have these mandarins, who serve up glittering generalities in the name of a "democracy" limited to a self-appointed International Viewpoint 20 May 1985 and this is no obligingly relayed by the media.* elite, ever seen the US intervene in Latin America a single time to overthrow a dictatorship that was oppressing the people?
What is more, who are these contras who are supposed to "save democracy?" This is how the members of an American Congressional investigating committee assessed them:
"During the testimony to the House Select Committee on Intelligence, members of the Congress and other sources revealed that official representatives of the CIA and other persons had presented evidence that the rebels supported by the United States raped, tortured, and killed civilians, including children. The report included data on groups of civilians, including women and children, who were burned, dismembered, blinded, and decapitated." ( International Herald Tribune, December 28, 1985.)
Washington Post correspondent R.J. McCartney found himself obliged, after an on-the-spot inquiry, to make the following judgement: "Furthermore, they [the contras] are threatening to alienate the peasant population with their practices of pillaging the peasants and slaughtering wounded fighters." ( International Herald Tribune, December, 11 1984).
This is the real face of the saviors of democracy that our crusaders against totalitarianism think that Reagan is supporting. Reagan, who in the 1960s called for bombing Vietnam until it was "as flat as a parking lot." You would wonder what kind of "democracy" these people think they are defending when they see the contras and a stepped-up US military effort as guarantees of "freedoms."
Nonetheless, there is one faet that springs immediately to the eye for all "honest human beings," a category that is becoming scarce among the Paris intelligentsia.
"In the two first years of the revolution, leaving aside the initial chaos -which was minimal by comparison with the start of other revolutions - there has been no repression, no deaths, nor any attacks in the border areas. There was a general climate of peace, despite the natural ideological struggle set in motion by a process of deepgoing changes.
All the quotations originally in English in this article have been retranslated from the French. 1. On the Nicaraguan elections, see IV. No. 62, October 20, 1984.
Latin American Newsletters, March 29. 1985. 3. Jose Luis Coraggio, •Cuadernos "Revolucion Democracia en Nicaragua, de Pensamiento Propio, Managua, INIES, p.5
For the text of this appeal, see IV. No. 74. April 22, 1985.
6
*The war came in December 1981, and peasants who are in power. They The power of the anti-imperialist when the US government decided to give realize that their tasks today are to mobilization cannot by itself eliminate clandestine support, through the CIA, to improve, refine, and perfect their instru- the concrete differences in material the Somoza National Guard veterans ments of rule." (7) interest running through the electorate concentrated in Honduras. From that Carlos Nunez Tellez, another revolu- that, by voting, declared its opposition to moment, peace in Nicaragua has become tionary commander, stressed in April US intervention. It cannot wipe out the more and more remote as a war has been 1980 the decisive role of the mass social scars left by a terrible civil war, imposed on the country and its army, organizations because "the revolutionary by decades of dictatorship (an illiteracy a war that the revolutionary govern- state that we have begun to create must rate of 52% in 1979, an infant mortality ment and the people do not want.' (5) before all else be an instrument of the rate of 200 per thousand, etc.), the scars revolution." (8) moreover created by the effects of the
Moreover, despite this counterrevo- From the outset, the FSLN saw a economic strangulation cynically applied lutionary war on the frontiers of the dialectical process developing. On the by Washington. But it represents a country, despite the attacks against one hand, it involved using the power considerable card for the FSLN, even a hospitals, schools, and cooperatives, the that had been won to widen the partici- decisive one. Sandinistas have extended the rights pation of the masses and extend their In order to make the picture as clear pation of the masse of the masses. Their army is serving as a democratic and soci guarantor of the creation and consolida- reform, providing fo tion of people's power. This is the real literacy, health, the aggression against imperialism and against unions, the right of those who live off the proceeds of media the other, it involved circuses, who think that nothing can be into the direct agent o changed, and in particular nothing should of the society on th be changed in this world. political, and cultural
These "democrats" can, to be sure, "For the Sandini lay claim to a tradition, that of the racy cannot be mea French National Assembly in May 1791, political level, nor is when the majority led by Barnave, participation of the 1 leader of the bourgeois right in opposition Democracy ... means to Robespierre thought that the Rights of people in political, Man belonged only to the white man and and cultural affairs. I to him alone. So, with respect to the that the people play slaves, they were able to say: "The more democracy there National Assembly has declared that it will not consider the status of nonfree persons ... A change in their condition Nationalism and would be contrary to the general good." Socialism
A Sandinista leader has said: "We can
Obviously, in a c say that in Nicaragua the socialist decades of imperialis program has always been inseparable oppression, winning from building substantive democracy."
sovereignty, self-deter (6) This marriage between a deepgoing national independer political, social and economic transformacondition for carry tion - a long-term one with respect process of liberation to the last two aspects - and a peasants and workers deepening of direct democracy on all ers of their own histor levels cannot be understood without After pointing to illustrating both the process that led to posed by the world e victory in July 1979 and the nature of legacy of dictators the regime that has been built up since. aggression, e revolutio
First of all, the overthrow of Somoza Victor Tirado Lopez involved incorporating the masses into a our country, revoluti prolonged struggle that culminated in in the final analysis w mass insurrections and a military offenuse our natural reso sive led by the FSLN. Prompted by the establish new econom Sandinistas and the needs of the struggle, other countries." (10) the peasants, the pauperized strata in This fight for so the cities, the youth in school, and today takes the form women built mass organizations. Already resistance to the atta in 1978, they were brought together in and the imperialists the MPU (Movement of the People
In order to make the picture as clear al rights (agrarian as possible, I will take up only five aspects of "people's power" in this od for the masses, right to organize period when a new Nicaragua is being assembly, etc.). On built under the conditions of imperialist making the masses encirclement. Sandinista democracy rests in the first instance on the mass organizaithe transformation tions. Their function is to defend the e economic, social, evels.
interests of the various sectors of the sta front, democpeople, to unify the popular strata, to sured only on the give Nicaraguan citizens the opportunit limited to the ity for the first time to assert collectively seople in elections.
and individually their rights on the participation of the social, economic, and political levels.
economic, social,
Joining these mass organizations is
'he greater the role voluntary. They, therefore, play a direct role in the conscious reinforcement of in these areas, the will be." (9)
the new workers state. Their growth is one of the characteristics of the revolution.
These organizations include, among others, the Sandinista Labor Confederation (CST) and the Association of
Rural Workers (ATC), trade-union ountry marked by organizations that today represent about t exploitation and
75% of urban and rural wage workers.
and consolidating
(12)
mination and real
Alongside these trade-union ice, is a preorganizations are the National Union of ring through the
Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), which and making the includes small and middle peasants and the direct fashioneven big farmers who agree to work y.
within the framework of the priorities all the obstacles set by the revolution. (13) There is also conomic crisis, the the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Nicaraguan lip, and military
Women's Association (AMNLAE) for nary commander women and the Juventud Sandinista - 19 stressed that "for
Julio for young people.
on means that ...
Finally, the creation of instruments e decide on how to urces and how to lic exchanges with
"Nous voulons la paix," Letter of the
5.
Christian Base Communities of Nicaragua to the Men and Women of the Entire World vereignty - which
Working for Peace, a special by Cimade.
Information, Paris, November 1984.
of massive military
6. Jose Luis Coraggio, Op. Cit., p.5 cks of the contras
Bayardo Arce, *El papel de las fuerzas motrices antes y despues del triunfo." Serie
- is forging the
No. 6,
Managua,
Orientacion Sandinista, national consciousnes
United). Under the political hegemony this process are comb of the FSLN, they integrated themselves of a nation and the rise into the fight against politically
It is, among oth the dictatorship and imperialism.
reason that the contr i of the masses. In
1980. p.29 1980, p.29 ined the emergence 8. Carlos Nunez of people's power. las organizaciones de revolucionario," Serie er things, for this No. 3. Managua, 1980. as and their politi- 9. Barricada, the
"El papel de
Tellez, en el proceso masa
Orientacion Sandinista, of the FSLN, organ
This mass participation in all aspects cal representatives of the assault on the dictatorship inlimited political supp
. "Comunicado oficial de
August 24, 1980.
only very enjoy la Direccion nacional del FSLN sobre el proceso ort, despite all the electoral."
Vintor Tirado Loney"Ta respuesta stalled by the US in the 1930s led, once enormous economic difficulties the revo- 10. a la " CST pamphlet, "La respuesta the victory was won, to a regime repre- lution is going through. After the Managua, 1982. senting the working people. As Bayardo November 1984 elections, Daniel Ortega 11. Pensamiento Propio, No. 19, Managua,
December 1984, p.8 Arce, one of the nine revolutionary could say with justification that over and 12. Carlos M. Vilas, "Democracia popular y commanders, indicated in 1980: above the political differences that the participacion obrera revolucion sandinista," Estudio Social Centroamericano,
"We state categorically that the FSLN had with a lot of those who did
No. 35, 1983, p.103. toiling classes in our country realize that not vote for the Sandinistas (33%), the 13. cf the interview with Daniel Nunez, through the Sandinista victory they very fact of participating in the elections president of UNAG, in issue No. 190 of
Inprecor, IV's French language sister publichave taken power. It is the workers was a "vote for sovereignty." (11) ation, February 18, 1985. 10 International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
of self-organization and struggle against the dictatorship (the Civil Defense Committees - CDCs) has extended into the formation of the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS), mass local organizations that carry out numerous administrative tasks in the neighborhoods.
Such activity in the mass organizations, in which the defense of collective rights is reinforeing individual rights, is bringing about a radical break with a history in which the working people were bled and worked like cattle, atomized by repression, and deprived of the most elementary rights. Through participation in these organizations, the people can acquire dignity, and all the more so because the FSLN respects the autonomy of these bodies. They are by no means transmission belts.
"Most of the sharper criticisms of the state and the FSLN," the letter of the Nicaraguan Christian Communities said, "are coming from the Sandinista Youth and the Association of Rural Workers."
Back in 1981, the FSLN leadership pointed out: "The mass organizations... have sufficient means to combat ossification of these bodies through internal criticism, public criticism, using all the means of communication up to and including mobilization to demand that measures be taken that can assure that their demands are considered." (14)
In line with this, the right to strike, which was suspended when strikes (some of them promoted by unions linked to the American AFL-CIO) coincided with extreme difficulties in economic reconstruction, was reestablished in December 1981 by the Council of State. International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
Fifty percent of the Nicaraguan population is under 15 year of age (DR)
Such autonomy for the mass organizations means likewise that opposing positions can be defended within them, positions that may be put forward, even in an organized way by a plurality of parties. Moreover, different union confederations can be organized. Some of these confederations are grouped in the Nicaraguan Trade-Union Coordinating Committee (CSN), in which there are quite open debates, and this points toward a possible process of trade-union unification. (15)
In the mass organizations, the FSLN struggles to win political hegemony on the basis of "social pedagogy" on the basis of its practice and its program, the strength of conviction and the human and political quality of those who identify most directly with it.
Some people in the ranks of the Social Democracy claim the game is rigged because the FSLN controls the key levers in the state apparatus and the army. Such criticism indeed comes from people who have a great fund of experience in manipulating bureaucratic trade-union apparatuses, but it ignores one problem. The weight and responsibility that the FSLN carries in the government identify it with all the difficulties the working people have to face.
The Social Democrats know something about the problems of governmental responsibility! In France and in Spain when they have taken over administering an austerity policy they have experienced a grave loss of credibility and had to pay a heavy price on the electoral and trade-union level. But the FSLN, despite all the obstacles and without resorting to repression, has not only maintained its support but reinforced it. This is the best illustration that the : Sandinistas' hegemony rests on the legitimacy they gained in the struggle against Somoza and imperialism and on their identification with the achievement of dignity, in the broadest sense, by the masses.
Of course, these mass organizations have problems. Carlos Nunez has noted some of the obstacles to their development - lack of cadres; an insufficient cultural and technical level; the difficulties, in an essentially agricultural country, of surmounting narrow special and local interests in order to instill broader and longer term perspectives into the consciousness of the masses; the exertions and sacrifices demanded by reconstruction; the ever present tendencies to bureaucratization and misuse of office in a situation of scarcity of the basic necessities; the disproportion between the immense sacrifices made by the toiling masses (eg. in the civil war, the effort to increase production, and in the new war of aggression) and the immediate material results, despite all the progress that has been made. (16)
Whatever the gaps between the daily reality and the general conceptions, the FSLN and the levers the working people have for intervening in various 14. Barricada, July 2, 1981. 15. See the speech of Victor Tirado Lopez to the assembly of construction workers in Managua on October 12, 1982, which is in the pamphlet quoted in foot-note 10. 16. Carlos Nunez Tellez, Op. Cit., p. 13.
11
Militia members on guard against contra attacks (DR)
areas of social life offer safeguards against authoritarian tendencies getting out of hand, against a total concentration of power at the top and, with it, an undermining of activity of the masses -the sort of thing that could lead to the kind of catastrophe that happened in Grenada. This was recognized implicitly by Jose Luis Coraggio:
"In this sense and in the face of the possibility of a US invasion, there is no chance that the Grenada tragedy will be repeated in Nicaragua, given the strength and authority that the mass organizations have already won and their interlocking with the revolutionary project." (17)
All historic experience shows that the insurance against the dissolving effects of poverty fostered by an imperialist encirclement policy is to boost the level of consciousness, mobilization, democracy, and direct mass involvement. This insurance, however, is not of the "all risk" kind.
Overlooking the economic, social, and military context in which "people's power" is being built in Nicaragua in the name of an ahistorical, asocial, and non-class conception of democracy means disregarding the consequences 12 of decades of exploitation and oppression imposed by imperialism on a people who have been deprived for centuries of the ability to express themselves.
Moreover, raising such an abstract notion of democracy means proposing as a "model" a form of democracy where the isolated individual, called the "free citizen" is simply the legal reflection of a supposedly "free" and "equal" relationship between the free owners of the means of production and the workers who are "free" to be fired, to have their wages cut, or to compensate for the meager social security benefits available to them by "individual saving for a rainy day."
However, the Nicaraguans have already experienced such a model in substance if not in the proposed political form, under Somoza. And they have said "no thanks!"
The FSLN has hegemony over the revolutionary process, that is, it holds political and moral authority for the bulk of the working people. This ascendency is not based on a monopoly of power by a party, by a single political force. Hegemony here means the opposite of a one-party system, it was won in the course of the struggle
Trol against imperialism and the dictatorship.
Over 18 years, and in an accelerated way after 1977-1978, the FSLN was able to represent and give concrete form to the opposition to the Somoza regime. It gradually wrested all real political authority away from the anti-Somoza bourgeoisie, which wanted to keep the same socio-economic system, but without Somoza. To that end, it sought American mediation in order to solve the "crisis" at the least cost, that is, assuring its positions.
Thus, the FSLN was able to create a sort of national "consensus" among the bulk of the people. Once the backbone of the Somoza regime - the National Guard — was destroyed, it pursued the democratic and anti-imperialist tasks at a higher level by building up the mass organizations. The agrarian reform was a keystone of this change.
At every turning, the Sandinistas forced the "opposition bourgeoisie" to expose itself on questions that clearly involved the interests of the masses and of national independence. Gradually, the Robelos and the Cruzes revealed their 17. Jose Luis Coraggio, Op. Cit.. p.25.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
lack of any program for building national democracy, by putting their future in the hands of the contras and of Washington.
In the train of democratic and anti-imperialist measures that were introdduced at a rate that corresponded to the objective possibilities and to the advances in the consciousness and organization of the masses, the FSLN began to carry out certain socialist tasks. It also showed its capacity to incorporate more and more into the revolutionary process social sectors that had not been in the forefront of the fight against the dictatorship, both sections of the peasantry or even of the small working class of Managua.
The roots and the power of the FSLN's hegemony thus lie in the strategy based on the conception that "Sandino and Sandinoism are the symbol of our nationality, the standard around which the greatest part of the nation can be rallied to achieve the victory of our national aim ... And in this process of developing historical and national consciousness, the FSLN remains - as it was during the war of liberation - the vanguard that strives to understand the people and which is leading the people, while always remaining answerable to the people." (18)
This sort of hegemony in fact presupposes pluralism. As Jose Luis Coraggio pointed out: "The Nicaraguan people have opted for a pluralist system, involving political parties that compete for power through elections. They have given recognition to the FSLN's revolutionary line, which means deepening the social, political, and economic transformations of Nicaraguan society and rejecting US domination." (19)
The FSEN, thus, continually renews and consolidates its hegemony through its capacity to respond to the needs of the masses - its superiority on this level - as well as that of ideas over the other political forces.
In November 1984, Carlos Nunez said, "Sandinista hegemony will be assured to the extent that its representatives on the Sandinista front's National Unity slate are able to promote a draft of a political constitution suited to the reality of our country, one that can incorporate the most profound revolutionary conceptions, which will reflect the power in the hands of the people and, at the same time, the most modern juridic conceptions, as well as the most advanced ideas of the forces represented." (20)
This necessary combination between pluralism and hegemony has found an ideological and cultural underpinning in the special alliance that was forged in the Nicaraguan revolution. This was pointed up by Gallardo, an FSLN cadre, who described an alliance between "the three historic currents of humanity. One is nationalism, especially the nationalism of the poor masses represented by the traditional struggles of the Nicaraguan people and, more particularly, by the anti-imperialist and popular programmatic heritage left by Sandino ... Another is Christianity, represented by the religious feeling and popular culture of the great masses of the people of Nicaragua and by the participation in the struggles of the revolutionary process of a large number of Christians, both in the insurrectionary war and in the process of consolidating the revolution ... Another is Marxism and the revolutionary experiences of other peoples that the Sandinista front absorbed during its fight against the dictatorship."(21)
Nonetheless, the growing aggression of the counterrevolutionary forces and the imperialists forced the FSLN to impose some restrictions on democratic rights as regards the freedom of organization and activity of some opposition forces, over and above the military answer to these attacks that has already been given.
On November 13, 1984, Daniel Ortega revolutionary commander and president of Nicaragua, said: "The Sandinista Front will make every effort to maintain pluralism, but in the last instance this situation will be determined by the aggressive policy of the United States. If we face bombing, or if there is an intervention, we will find ourselves forced to introduce a state of war, and obviously that will affect the efforts we are making to definitively establish democracy in Nicaragua." (22)
In conformity with the whole previous historical pattern, therefore, the responsibility for restricting a series of rights will rest first of all with the imperialists, who consider this region part of their empire. But any such necessary restrictions will be directed against those who oppose the majority of the people becoming an independent political subject, those who, while they sometimes speak in the name of democracy, will be prepared to applaud enthusiastically the attempts to break the combativity of the toiling masses by war, and who will collaborate with such attempts.
Furthermore, it is necessary to understand that the Sandinista's strategy with respect to pluralism and "people's democracy" is not dictated by purely tactical and diplomatic considerations arising from the demands of the fight against imperialism. The FSLN does, of course, realize that developing such "people's democracy" is a means of struggle making it politically more difficult for the United States on the domestical and the international front to mount an intervention. But, it has also seen that its strength lies above also seen that its strength les above all in its capacity to rally a vast popular political consensus against the options of Reagan and his allies within Nicaragua.
In this respect, the combination of hegemony and pluralism also assures the defense of the revolution on the military level. And this is to say nothing of the guarantee it represents against all the bureaucratic deformations that, as the FSLN itself explains, continually threaten a besieged revolution that is being bled white.
In reality, an examination of the course of the revolution shows that, despite the escalating economic and military attacks, democratic rights, including their formal juridical expression, have been continually expanded. This has been the pattern from the Fundamental Statute of July 1979 to the November - 1984 elections and the Nationalities 18. "Nous voulons la paix," p.15. 19. Jose Luis Coraggio, "Elecciones: interrogantes y desafios." in Pensamiento Propio, Managua, December 1984, p.9. 20. Carlos Nunez, quoted in Pensamiento Propio, December 1984, p.9. 21. Gallardo, "Nicaragua sandiniste devant la crise internationale," 1985, p.38. 22. Daniel Ortega, quoted in Pensamiento Propio, Managua, December 1984, p.10.
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The writing is on the wall for traitors Pastora and Robelo (DR)
MISTER ROBELD
→NO PASARNNAN DAIME
EDEN
TRAIDOR
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
To pursue this ideal of democratization, the officers of this new army should also be designated by, and responsible to, the people through processes that assure the political predominance of the popular classes.
"We do not advocate the election of officers by the soldiers but rather mechanisms for maintaining popular surveillance of the army, as well to assure that it is an institution controlled by the people and not one that controls the people." (25) The elections and the revolution
Of course, the challenge of thwarting the plans of the contras and the imperialists is more urgent and more immediate. However, the question raised and the suggestion made in the letter of the Christian Base Communities cannot fail to be considered for the future of the revolution. More generally, they cannot be allowed to fade from the thinking of those who are waging a relentless struggle to assure that the seizure of power by the workers opens the way for a project whose success depends in large part on the interpenetration between socialism and democracy. (26)
Having forgotten that elections based on universal suffrage took place during the Paris Commune of 1871, more than a few revolutionary socialists and Marxists were disconcerted by the November 1984 elections in Nicaragua. In fact, the Sandinistas undertook the difficult operation - and the problems were not only tactical - of submitting for popular approval their revolutionary program, as well as its application under the hegemony of the "vanguard party," the FSLN.
This approval was sought not just in the mass organizations, where the devotion and honesty of the FLN's activists can often be more easily recognized but also in the isolation and "secrecy" of the ballot box. "Sandinista democracy" is not —far from it - limited to elections. But it does not exclude them. As the 1980 slogan, "The people have already made their choice," indicated, the first elections took place in July 1979, through the mass popular insurrection. Some people forget this revolutionary legitimacy, which was also won by the bourgeois revolutions.
Furthermore, the FSLN is conscious of the connotations assumed by elections in the history of Nicaragua, when terror, patronage, and corruption reigned. Then, the only purpose of elections was to provide a new mask for the same dictator. Then, poverty and illiteracy made the formal democratic right to vote meaningless. (Even in Europe, the right to vote was only won for the masses by general strikes, a fact that more than a few "democratic" scribes skip over.)
Back in July 1979, the FSLN promised to hold elections. But it demands posed by the social aspect of democratic rights. In line with this, "Sandinista democracy" focused first on meeting the basic needs of the masses (literacy, health care, education, jobs, etc.), on involving the masses directly in government through the mass organizations and in the popular defense of the new state, on all the rights inscribed in the various statutes and laws. All of this served to foster real "democratic" conditions for holding elections, which for many Nicaraguans would not only be the first free elections but the first ones of any kind.
The FSLN, thus, integrated the elections into its project. It used them as a second literacy campaign, a political literacy campaign, educating thousands of activists, conducting an intense dialogue with the workers, the peasants, and the population at large. It refused to exclude beforehand any national ideological current. But it rejected the blackmail and conditions put forward by those who - like Arturo Cruz's National Democratic Coordinating Committee - saw these elections as an opportunity for opening up "negotiations" aimed at undermining the authority of the elections and conferring legitimacy on Washington's stooges, the contras, the core of whom are veterans of Somoza's infamous National Guard.
By incorporating elections into the mechanism for institutionalizing the new regime, by giving official status to its opposition, the FSLN chose to pose a whole series of problems that are in part unprecedented in the transition to socialism. To some extent, these mechanisms will continue to operate as a permanent constraint. In fact, the FSLN will have to try to avert votes of sanction against the revolutionary project, votes that could represent a refracted response by some popular sectors to errors committed by the regime, to bureaucratic deformation, to a weakening of its ties with the masses.
In fact, the firmest guarantees on the political level of consolidating FSLN hegemony, even after it has been legitimized by "classical" elections, lie in carrying forward the democratization of society and refining the mechanisms for direct mass participation in its administration. This means, among other things, that the private sector must be prevented from taking advantage of the economic crisis to weaken the workers, and that will require new incursions into this redoubt of the bourgeois forces.
On the other hand, the fact that the November 1984 elections were held in the midst of a war situation is something more that writers with special interests to defend and selective memories have left out of their scribblings.
In the relatively near future, if the imperialist aggression leaves enough room for this, one of the major questions that will arise both for the mass organizations and in the National Assembly will be the linkup between the insticreate and the organizational instruments in the hands of the people.
In approaching this question, it has to be remembered always that Nicaragua had just emerged from 45 years of dietatorship and from a civil war whose scars had not yet healed when a new war began! In fact, "the Sandinista revolution must take up the task of creating a state, not just as one coming out of a popular anti-imperialist endeavor but also in the most elementary sense, a modern state -from a national army to a modern communications network, from a judicial system to an educational one." (28)
Somoza's state rested almost entirely on the National Guard, a sort of Praetorian Guard, and on institutions that served the interests of the Somoza clan more than the ruling class as a whole, except as regards the repression they exercised against the popular masses. It was, indeed, the backwardness of this state by comparison with a certain economic development of Nicaragua under the impetus of the Central American Common Market that helped to push bourgeois sectors into opposition to Somoza.
Thus, for the FSLN, building a modern state apparatus is one of the most complex tasks. It has at the same time to build up the essential elements of a state apparatus able to direct the urgent and elementary tasks that have to be carried out for a transition to socialism as well as assure that the masses, who in the normal course of things are impelled to raise demands that are often difficult to satisfy, can have a direct influence on, and in, these institutions. The role of the Church hierarchy.
Moreover, in building up this state, the FSLN is running into opposition not only from the contras, the imperialists, and their political allies but also from the only centralized apparatus with a popular base that existed under Somoza, the Church. This apparatus, like the hierarchy that directs it, can accept neither the social and cultural transformation of the country nor the consolidation of a new state that is not prepared to leave a space in the civil society for the ecclesiastical bureaucratic machine. This is the driving force behind the counterrevolutionary policy of the top levels of the Church, which 25. "Nous voulons la paix," p 22. 26. On this subject, see the resolution adopted by the Eleventh World Congress of the Fourth International in November 1979, the text of which was published in a special supplement to Intercontinental Press, January 1980. 27. On this subject see the resolution adopted by the Fourth International, of which a draft was published in a special issue of Inprecor given over to the eleventh World Congress in November 1979. 28. On this question see Pensamiento Proprio, 28. On this question see Pensamiento Proprio. October-November 1984.
correctly gave priority to meeting the tutions that the "New Nicaragua" will
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Law (on the Miskitos), including the Statute on the Rights and Guarantees of Nicaraguans in August 1970 and the Law on Political Parties of August 1983, to say nothing of all the basic social gains made in the same period. The international press had had a lot to say about the censorship of the opposition daily La Prensa. It has not raised the same commotion about the liquidation of all the press with the slightest inclination to independence in El Salvador, which has been accompanied by around 50,000 murders committed by the death squadrons linked to the military hierarchy. It has not taken the trouble to explain that the censorship of La Prensa, which gets aid under the table from the imperialists, applies to reports of a military importance and those related to the hoarding of consumer goods and speculation. It said virtually nothing about the almost total lifting of this censorship throughout the electoral campaign.
A little detail somehow gets left out in the international press's accounts of this censorship. It is that the censored pages circulate unimpeded in Managua in the form of photocopies that reach all the diplomatic agencies. Most of all, the "free world" press exhibits a peculiar forgetfulness about its own history. In
"democratic" country such as Switzerland, for example, from the outset of the Second World War the left was very systematically censored. •But Switzerland was far from being under attack. It had simply made a deal with the Nazi regime, offering the latter the use of its means of communication in exchange for "peace," arms contracts for its industries, and an influx of capital into its banks. It is hardly necessary, moreover, to belabor the point about the gagging of the French press more than once during the Algerian war. From the moment of its triumph on July 19, 1979, the Nicaraguan revolution's strategic position in the "backyard" of the United States imposed the need for military defense, supported and conditioned by all the other mechanisms for safeguarding and deepening the revolution.
The Sandinista People's Army (EPS) is the product of the fight against the dictatorship. "It is workers and peasants -50 percent of the soldiers in the army are illiterate - who hold the arms for defending their class interests," Bayardo Arce explained at the beginning of 1980. He continued as follows:
"It is the workers and peasants who hold the main instrument of power, that is, the army and the armed force, not only because of the principles that guide our armed forces but also because of the class composition of our brothers the Sandinista People's Army, the Sandinista National Police, and the state security forces." (23)
The military power of the new state
125, thus, "at the same time as being national army, the army of a nation
Wol
Two young Nicaraguans (DR)
born in the course of the anti-imperialist popular struggle. It is not the army of a party but an army that recognizes the political content - and in the last analysis, the class context of the plan for the nation given impetus by the Sandinista revolution." (24)
Alongside the professional army, very rapidly, starting in 1980, the FSLN set up people's militias. These formations opened the way for incorporating popular strata into the armed forces and complemented the system of military service. They also made it possible to integrate workers, peasants, students, and members of the liberal professions, on a voluntary basis, into the defense of the revolution.
Moreover, measures of self-defense against those who in practice oppose by force the interests of the people can be taken, if necessary, both by the mass organizations and by the people's institution represented by the militias. The latter express to the highest degree the lack of separation between the army and the people. This is an example that the professional defenders of Western "democracy" would look for in vain anywhere else in Latin America.
What is more, the very tasks of the army in production, in aiding the peasants — to say nothing of the wearing duties of the struggle against the contras -indicate that it is in essence a means for assuring the survival and development of the country in the interests of the exploited.
The Christian Base Communities explain a challenge facing the EPS. "It is a longer-term one, involving the democratization of the army. It is clear that a professional army will have an important place in Nicaragua for a long time. 'All arms to the people' is a slogan that expresses today an entirely valid road toward democratizing national defense ... 23. Bayardo Arce, Op.Cit., p.30. 24. Carlos M. Vilas, La revolucion sandinista, Editions Legasa, Buenos Aires, 1984, p.202.
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Sandinista fighters (DR) provides a channel for a major part of the political opposition to the new regime.
The ability of the mass organizations to intervene in this process of institutionalization depends first of all on their retaining the autonomy from these institutions. Carlos Nunez pointed up the danger that an idea might begin to grow up among the popular masses, as a result of the malfunctioning of the state apparatus and "bureaucratic deviations" that "the state does not represent them [the masses] ... We must, therefore, take into account the reality that to a certain extent the mass organizations sometimes act like parastate bodies because they do not find in the state bodies the receptivity, dynamism and agility necessary for solving problems."
From this, Nunez drew the conclusion that the mass organizations "must also be instruments capable of expressing, with autonomy, the demands of the social sectors they represent. And, therefore, they will have to resort to both the most usual and the most unusual means." (29)
Involvement in the running of the state is a right that the masses have won in their struggle. It is not a concession made by the new regime to the workers, the peasants, and the pauperized urban masses. It is a fundamental right with a great practical importance for any transition to socialism.
One form of such direct participation lies in the discussion of various health and educational programs by the organized users of these services, as well as by the workers in these sectors. One of the most important forms is involvement 16 in economic management. This is where the apprenticeship in direct administration is the most complicated where inertia, both in agriculture and in the rickety industrial sector, most makes itself felt, where the technical and cultural handicaps have the greatest effect, where the technicians' uneasiness in the face of a dynamic of self-management merits a whole separate study in itself. In this area, the Sandinistas are running into big problems, in particular because they cannot reabsorb the "informal sector" (pedlars, etc.) Their strong point is that they recognize and discuss these questions. This, indeed, Is another dimension of "Sandinista democracy."
Finally, the state apparatus cannot function in a neutral way. " Working for the government today demands not inconsiderable sacrifices," (30) given the low wages. The private sector does not fail to try to lure away technicians by offering more attractive salaries. In this way, it is seeking to undermine the administrative functioning of the new regime. But, despite the abnegation of a great many "functionaries," the problem of control over government employees remains unsolved. In fact, this question is being raised publicly:
"As regards the relationship between the government and the party, it is necessary to perfect mechanisms by which government functionaries can have their stewardship examined by the people, as well as means to prevent the government's logic from becoming confused with that of partisan organizations." (31)
This body of questions will underlie all the discussions on the new constitution and on the nature of the new party to be consolidated. Among other things, in the framework of the powers devolved on the legislature, it will be necessary to clarify the specific decision-making powers of the mass organizations in the areas that concern them and in economic management. This will be one of the key points in the coming institutionalization process.
The FSLN has explained several times that it has been able to draw the essential lessons from the past experiences and to take account quite accurately of the specific context in which the revolution is unfolding. It has avoided the Scylla and Charybidis, of on the one hand, trying to follow an abstract model, and, on the other, underestimating the underlying questions of the transition to socialism.
In the last analysis, the model that will prove valid will be the one that corresponds to the needs of the people, and that the people will defend wholeheartedly against growing attacks of all sorts against the revolution.
For us, this revolution that represents the advances made in the understanding of socialist revolutions has the right to solidarity from every anti-imperialist activist. And at the same time, it also demands that we make a determined effort to draw the lessons of an experience that is becoming part of the heritage of the working people of the entire world. 29. Carlos M. Vilas, La revolucion Sandinista, p. 364. 30. Carlos Nunez Telles, op cit. p. 15 and following. 31. "Nous voulons la paix," p. 16. 32. Idem.
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