Twenty five years ago, the FSLN seized power in Nicaragua. Although it
is difficult to see this abjectly miserable country in these terms
today, back then it fueled the hopes of radicals worldwide that a new
upsurge in world revolution was imminent. Along with Grenada, El
Salvador and Guatemala, where rebel movements had already seized power
or seemed on the verge of taking power, Nicaragua had the kind of allure
that Moscow had in the 1920s.
So what happened?
While nobody would gainsay the political collapse of the FSLN after its
ouster and troubling signs just before that point, it is worth looking a
bit deeper into its rise and fall. There are strong grounds to seeing
its defeat not so much in terms of its lacking revolutionary fiber, but
being outgunned by far superior forces. With all proportions guarded, a
case might be made that Sandinista Nicaragua had more in common with the
Paris Commune than the Spanish Popular Front, which was doomed to
failure by the class collaborationist policies of the ruling parties.
You can get a succinct presentation of this analysis from Lee Sustar, an
ISO leader who contributed an article to Counterpunch titled 25 Years
on: Revolution in Nicaragua. He states:
While the U.S. and its contra butchers are to blame for the destruction
of the Nicaraguan economy, the contradiction at the heart of the FSLNs
politics was instrumental in its downfall. FSLN leaders couldnt escape
the centrality of class divisions in the 'revolutionary alliance'--the
fact that workers and 'nationalist' employers had contradictory interests.
The conditions of workers had deteriorated throughout the 1980s as
runaway inflation wiped out wage gains. Workers participated in
Sandinista unions and mass organizations--but they didnt hold political
power, and their right to strike was suspended for a year as early as
1981. This allowed the opportunistic Nicaraguan Socialist Party--a
longtime rival of the FSLN--to give a left-wing cover to Chamorros
coalition, which in turn functioned as the respectable face of the contras.
With respect to the failure of the FSLN to align itself with workers
(and peasants, a significant omission in Sustar's indictment),
Washington seemed worried all along that bourgeois class interests were
being neglected and that Nicaragua was in danger of becoming another
Cuba. Of course, since Cuba never really overthrew capitalism according
to the ISO's ideological schema, this might seem like a moot point. In
any case, it is often more useful to pay attention to the class analysis
of the State Department and the NY Times than it does to small Marxist
groups. If the ruling class is worried that capitalism is being
threatened in a place like Nicaragua, they generally know what they are
talking about.
Virtually all the self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist formations, from
the Spartacist League to more influential groups like the ISO, believe
that the revolution collapsed because it was not radical enough. If the
big farms had been expropriated, it is assumed that the revolution would
have been strengthened. While individual peasant families might have
benefited from a land award in such instances, the nation as a whole
would have suffered from diminished foreign revenues. After all, it was
cotton, cattle and coffee that was being produced on such farms, not
corn and beans. When you export cotton on the world market, you receive
payments that can be used to purchase manufactured goods, medicine and
arms. There is not such a market for corn and beans unfortunately. Even
if the big farms had continued to produce for the agro-export market
under state ownership, they would have been hampered by the flight of
skilled personnel who would have fled to Miami with the owners. Such
skills cannot be replicated overnight, especially in a country that had
suffered from generations of inadequate schooling.
While all leftwing groups that operate on the premise that they are
continuing with the legacy of Lenin, virtually none of them seem
comfortable with the implications of Lenin's writings on the NEP, which
are crucial for countries like Nicaragua in the 1980s or Cuba today, for
that matter. In his speech to the Eleventh Congress of the Communist
Party in 1922, Lenin made the following observations:
The capitalist was able to supply things. He did it inefficiently,
charged exorbitant prices, insulted and robbed us. The ordinary workers
and peasants, who do not argue about communism because they do not know
what it is, are well aware of this.
'But the capitalists were, after all, able to supply thingsare you?
You are not able to do it.' That is what we heard last spring; though
not always clearly audible, it was the undertone of the whole of last
springs crisis. As people you are splendid, but you cannot cope with
the economic task you have undertaken. This is the simple and withering
criticism which the peasantryand through the
