Michael Perelman wrote:
>In what way is Petras ultraleft?
In 1990 Daniel Ortega ran unsuccessfully against Violeta Chamorro under
conditions of total isolation internationally. The USA had just cut a deal
with the USSR to dump Nicaragua. The country had been devastated by over 5
years of contra war, earthquake, hurricanes and civil war with Somoza. In
the aftermath of Ortega's loss, the left tried to figure out "what went
wrong". Petras wrote a well-publicized attack on the FSLN for not calling
off the elections and declaring war on the internal bourgeois opposition,
suspending La Prensa and nationalizing the large estates. In other words,
Nicaragua should have transformed itself into Cuba. If this position is not
ultraleft, I don't know what is. In reality, there was little that could
have been done to defend the revolution since the USSR had already decided
to move toward capitalism. Nicaragua was not an island like Cuba, nor was
the Cuban revolution organized when the USSR was an accomplice of US
foreign policy. To not see these differences is foolish.
Louis Proyect
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