Pabloites endorse FSLN expulsion of their 'comrades' from Nicaraaua

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Castro with Mexican bourgeois President Portillo Dilyaue Were summar my conuncilor expelled from Nicaragua by September 1979), SWP leaders orders of the Sandinist Interior Barry Sheppard and Mary Alice They were accused Of- the PST of trying to "outflank among other things-advocating the Sandinistas on the left" by the seizure of all land, forming exploiting:

Okhrana mugshot of Stalin Malinovsky's background is certainly given in some more detail than was previously known, but the possibly crucial question of his early criminal record remains vague.

In the absence of information on this aspect we cannot be certain of Malinovsky's early relationship with the police.

Despite this uncertainty, there is no reason to believe that Malinovsky's work in the Metalworkers Union was in any way directed by the police.

• The fact that he knew the name of Zavarzin, the Moscow section head of the Okhrana, and asked to see him when arrested in 1910, need not necessarily indicate anything more than an intelligent, active Social Democrat would already be aware of.

On Malinovsky's relationship with Lenin, and the confidence Lenin had in him, Elwood telis us little of importance.

Indeed he neglects to discuss the seriousness of the arguments that grew up around suspicions of Malinovsky.

Bukharin in particular, one of Malinovsky's first victims, several times attempted unsuccessfully, to convince Lenin. (The interested reader will find some moré on this matter in S.F. Cohen's Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution).

Turning point

Elwood proposes that Lenin was so delighted with the recruitment of a genuine trade union leader that he was blinded to the evidence that he was presented with.

Certainly this may be true, and we should not blind ourselves to the errors of great revolutionary leaders.

At the time Malinovsky présented himself first to Lenin, Lenin was anxiously looking for confirmation of the correctness of his position in the battle with the Mensheviks and the recruitment of a trade union leader must have seemed like a turning point.

On the Okhrana's decision to abandon the project, Elwood's description of the growing success of the Bolsheviks is a convincing contribution.

On Malinovsky's return to Russia to face certain execution he is less helpful.

It may be that Malinovsky hoped yet again to survive on the basis of his relationship with Lenin.

On the question of recent suggestions that Lenin knew of Malinovsky's role, Elwood's demolition is concise and systematic.

Professor Elwood's book should be welcomed as a serious study by a very able scholar. It will be of great value in discussions of this period of history and also on questions of security in the Party.

Lenin itself in new internal divisions in relation to every major new event in the international class struggle.

Cambodie Cambodia in December 1978, After Portugal in 1975 and the Vietnamese invasion of now the downfall of the Somoza dictatorship in the Central American republic of Nicaragua once again finds different components of the USFI on opposite sides of the class divide.

The differences arise over the deportation by the new government of members of the Simon Bolivar Brigade, a group of militants who had come to Nicaragua from Colombia to participate in the struggle against Anastasio Somoza.

Bold initiative

The Simon Bolivar Brigade was the result of a bold initiative taken in late May by the Socialist Workers Party (PST) in Colombia-though by no means all of the Brigade's members are political supporters of the PST.

The PST is a party whose leadership comes from the former Bloque Socialista, a left wing socialist party which was recruited to support of the USFI and to a declared adherence to Trotskyism by the leadership of the USFI's Bolshevik Faction led by Nahuel Moreno, a leading member of the PST of Argentina.

We cannot comment in detail on the activities of the Brigade but we consider the principle on which it seems to have been based as part of the Bolshevik tradition of proletarian internationalism.

After Somoza's overthrow, members of the brigade stayed in Nicaragua and, according to the PST's newspaper El Socialista, played a leading role in some parts of the country in the struggle to solidify the organisation of the masses especially in the building of trade unions.

In mid-August about 40 members of the Simon Bolivar navitie Minister Tomas Borge.

militias and describing FSLN leaders as: 'reactionary' and other members of the government as "bourgeois'.

This event has sparked off a bizarre controversy within the USFI. The majority of that grouping, particularly the American SWP, have openly and publicly condemned the activities of the Simon Bolivar Brigade.

But more than this they have condemned the political positions taken up by the PST critical of the leadership of the Sandinists.

In a recent article in Intermontinantal Draco/lninranne 12 Waters accuse the Brigade and 'the objective - problems Sandinista guerrillas facing the revolution-the • gap between the great hopes of the masses for immediate improvements in their living standards and the difficulties in achieving these goals quickly."

Sheppard and Waters say the Brigade deceived the people into thinking they represented the Sandinistas.

When summoned to the FSLN headquarters on August 14, the Brigade organised a demonstration which Sheppard and Waters characterise as a "provocation"-thus implicitly justifying the expulsion of the Dilyaut Deinmain rachinh followed.

They accuse the Brigade of giving:

"the bourgeois press a convenient target to launch its campaign against "Trotskyism" in the hopes of sowing confusion among the supporters of the Nicaraguan revolution."

No confusion from Sheppard and Waters. They say:

"The position of the Fourth International is to build a campaign of solidarity with the Nicaraguan revolution in collaboration with the FSLN not in opposition to it.

Moreover, the Fourth International has always stood on the conviction that revolutions are led by forces that arise out of the living struggle in their own country.

"It is a grotesque idea that a group of non-Nicaraguans ... could •.. build a counterleadership to the FSLN."

(our emphasis)

In Colombia itself the PSR, second USFI sympathising section which supports the USFI majority, has attacked the Brigade even more sharply.

It was, they say, a "sectarian initiative" , "a caricature of proletarian internationalism" and the majority of the Brigade's militarily untrained members they claim "sat out"' the war in neighbouring Costa Rica.

Rumours

The PSR condemns the sending of the Brigade because the Sandinists had not requested it and because, they say, it was set up in opposition to mass mobilisations in solidarity with Finally, they encourage rumours that the sums of money collected for the Brigade:

"are going not to cover legitimate expenses of the Brigade, but rather into Nahuel Moreno's pocket or into the coffers of the PST."

(See "Two lines on Nicaragua Solidarity Work" by E. Medrano, L. Gonzalez, G. Consuegra and A. Bayona, reprinted from the PSR's paper Combate Socialista in Intercontinental Press/Inprecor, 17 September 1979).

Behind all these issues is, of course a basic political disagreement.

The USFI majority has taken up a position of uncritical support for the FSLN and the Government of National Reconstruction, despite the clear bourgeois character of many of its components and the reactionary character of many Of its policies.

Adaptation

It is a political line which has nothing common with Trotskyism but plenty in common www ut vort majorny s man with tha lICEI mainnit,,, 20 voar Inna and etill arnwinn av yvar growing adaptation to the Stalinist leadership of Cuba.

This uncritical support for the Sandinists now extends to at least implicit backing for a flagrant attack on the democratic rights of members of their own international organisation.

The Colombian PST does not share the USFI!'s gross adaptation to the FSLN.

it pomts out ana condemns lennintin nand and anadaun the fact that the majority of members of the new junta set up by the FSLN are bourgeois.

It condemns policies of restriction of democratic rights and the absence of socialist economic measures.

"The fact is that a rapid process of disarming the militias and forming a regular army is taking place.

"The incident with the Simon Bolivar Brigade is only a detail in this picture.

"Among much of the Latin American left there are illusions that Nicaragua is sliding like a toboggan toward socialism, repeating the Cuban process.

"We in no way exclude the possibility that the FSLN leadership, or part of it, will end up breaking with the bourgeoisie, establishing a workers and peasants government and putting into practice an anticapitalist programme, as the leadership of the July 26 Movement did.

Precisely because we do not exclude this possibility, we explain to the Nicaraguan masses, with no sectarianism and more forcefully than ever, that they should demand that the FSLN leadership do this.

"But this is an abstract future possibility. Today the real and concrete fact is that the FSLN leadership is not going in this direction."

Covers up

The central flaw in the PST's position, however, is that it presents the way forward as entirely a question of putting pressure on the FSLN to become a revolutionary leadership.

E mlles 100 HONDURAS TEGUÇIGALPA Loon" •Matagalpa Masaya.

NAGU Rivas ® CARIBBEAN Ponasi SEA Blancas COSTA RICA PACIFIC SAN JOSE OCEAN In all its just criticisms of the FSLN and correct programmatic demands it covers up the presence of capitalist forces within the Sandinists; and it never once raises the question of the need to build an independent Trotskyist party in Nicaragua as the only force capable of leading the mass movement towards the socialist revolution.

Yet elsewhere in the USFI Bolshevik Faction supporters are campaigning against the majority leadership's position and specifically arguing that "the only leadership which can guarantee the development of the socialist revolution' in Nicaragua is a Trotskyist party" and that it is "the duty" of the USFI to build this party.

No common ground There appears to be no common ground between the two main factions, and it remains to be seen whether this fundamental division within the ranks of the. USFI will be resolved in the period leading up to its XIth World Congress.

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NDUSTRIAL METES BL A dispute lasting three weeks over a closed shop agreement has ended in total victory for the workers at Hollis, Hull Ltd.

The factory involved is situated in the dockland area of Hull and the firm is one of the main timber importers and suppliers in the country The dispute began after five clerical workers employed in the computer room at the factory refused to join the union.

80 other office workersand FTAT staging a one-day strike last week in solidarity with the office workers, as well as giving financial support in the form of 50p a day levy.

After 120 workers had been laid off, with threats of more to follow and talks with ACAS had broken down, it seemed that a long confrontation was on the way.

But with both strikers and shop floor: workers remaining united, management finally climbed down and called in the officials of the unions involved for talks on Friday.

These ended with the suspension of the five nonunionists until a new closed shop agreement has been drawn up which will include