Nicaragua and the crisis in the "United Secretariat

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Castro: gathered into the embrace of Stalinism in aftermath of 1959 revolution The dramatic events in Nicaragua which brought the downfall of the reactionary Somoza dictatorship and put the petty bourgeois Sandinista National Liberation Front in control of the country has not only had an impact in weakening imperialism's grip on Central America.

It has also produced a major upheaval in the world Trotskyist movement. The biggest self-proclaimed Trotskyist current internationally, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, split into three component parts on the eve of its long-awalted Xith World It is therefore well worth examining in some detail the positions of the two main USF:

tendencies on Nicaragua, which range from opportunism to outright political capitulation to the FSLN leadership.

Capitulation

Why do we use the term 'capitulation'? Because, as every USFI ideologue recognises, the FSLN, a petty bourgeois nationalist formation, is not a proletarian party and is thus incapable of carrying through the necessary struggle for the independent interests of the working class.

Under the massive material pressure of imperialism, such a formation-whatever its initial 'left': rhetoric-eventually finds itself reabsorbed into the world framework of capitalist exploitation.

The sole exception to this in the post-war period has been the Cuban revolution, in which Castro's petty bourgeois nationalist regime emerged at a time when Kremlin military strategy required an outpost close to the USA.

As the US economic blockade of Cuba developed, the Soviet bureaucracy offered economic, political and military aid to the Castroites, which over a period of years succeeded in assimilating the Castroite movement into the orbit of Stalinism.

Deformed Yet this alliance with Stalinism, coupled with the absence of a proletarian revolutionary party in Cuba, ensured that even the overturn of capitalist property relations, destruction of the old Cuban capitalist state machine and introduction of an economy based on nationalisation, produced only a deformed workers' state, in which the exercise of power remained throughout in the hands of the Castroite bureaucracy.

The lessons of Cuba have, however, not been learned by any of the tendencies of the USFI.

It was acutally formed as an international body in 1963 on the basis of common adulation for the Castroites and a common belief that "agreement" on the Cuban revolution wiped out previous disagreements and divisions.

Only now, with the 1979 split, has the extent of these problems been brought forcibly to the surface:

Let us examine the opposing views.

On November 12, the Intercontinental Press, reflecting the majority line of the USFl, and in particular the politics of the American Socialist Workers Party* , carried an extended piece by Peter (now Pedro) Camejo and Fred Murphy of the SWP entitled "How to answer ultra-left sectarianism in The article was designed as a defence of their party's conduct in face of the concrete evidence that has come to light in recent weeks of the repression of leftwing groups' by the SWP's chosen i political allies-the FSLN.

The article is necessarily long and painstaking since, as the *The American Sacialist Worker authors are obliged to admit, the Maoist Movimiento de Accion Popular (MAP) and Frente Obrero (FO) and the Trotskyist' Liga -Marxista Revolucionaria (LMR) Nicaraguan section of the USF!, have appreciable support, have been raising criticisms of the Sandinista regime from the left, and have been openly repressed.

Murphy and Camejo put ward two main arguments.

First, they say, since the FSLN heads a 'revolutionary government' its opponents have to be ultra-left and sectarian.

The FSLN position-that these groups are 'counter-revolutionary'-is concealed by the SWP, since the LMR claims to be a sympathising section of the USFI and a good deal of embarassment could be caused.

Secondly, Murphy and Camejo argue that the FSLN is now mending its-ways: it is experiencing 'an evolution in its thinking'.

Recent reports from Nicaragua indicate that the militants have indeed been released from jail, in line with the pronouncement of Minister of the Interior Tomas Borge that jail is not the best place for dialogue' and his request that the 'impatient left' demonstrate to the people 'the guidelines of Parto while in nolitical mimnn social participation'.

This evolution clearly reflects. the pressure of the masses on the FSLN leadership. But in no way does it represent a halt in their reconstruction of the bourgeois state.

If the MAP-FO and LMR were now to fight for a Trotskyist programme they. would, no doubt, be imprisoned very rapidly once again, since this would entail struggling for the construction of soviets las opposed to cross-class organs of popular administration under the hegemony of the FSLN), combating the FSLN's reformist turn to imperialism, fighting for the expropriation of all capital, and demanding the expulsion of bourgeois forces from the For the SWP, and indeed for the majority of the USFI, such demands now simply represent "sectarianism"

However, on the day that Somoza fled to Miami, Intercontinental Press actually itself called for the rejection of all military, political and economic pacts with the imperialist powers and repudiation of the foreign debt. It went on to call for.:

'expropriation without compensation and under workers control of all the property of Somoza, of his family, of all high officials of the regime, of imperialism, and of the 'national' capitalists •. The only government that can carry out such a programme excludes all representatives of the ruling classes and imperialism." (IP 16/7/79).

A mere seven weeks later, according to IP:

"The power that exists today in Nicaragua is a revolutionary power." (IP 3/9/79).

What then, we may legitimately ask, has happened in the meantime?

The property of the Somoza clan has been nationalised to be sure, but capital as a whole is staunchly defended and by. regime that figures amongst its members such leading owners of capital as Alfonso Robelo (millionaire owner of plantations and a large cooking-oil business and Violetta Barrios de Chamorro (whose family has extensive financial interests and controls the only bourgeois daily paper La Prensa).

Rescheduled

Aid has been directly sought from imperialism; debts are not to be repudiated but merely rescheduled; workers control exists only in those places where the workers are strong enough to enforce it against the dictates of the government; military aid from the US has been requested to build up a professional bourgeois army to counteract the threat of the militias; left-wing opponents are subjected to attack and arrest; and the revolution in the countryside has been suppressed for a capitalist 'agrarian reform' Yet far from criticism of such retreats, these policies have won the FSLN yards of free and uncritical column inches in IP (alongside Fidel Castro).

It is in this context that USFI support for the FSLN's attack on the Simon Bolivar Brigade and the subsequent USFI split with the Bolshevik Faction must be understood.

For, if the FSLN is 'revolutionary', it follows that:

"All activities which create divisions between the mobilised masses and the FSLN are contrary to the interests of the revolution". (IP 24/9/79).

In the eyes of Camejo, Robelo, Chamorro, Murphy, Barnes and the SWf leadership, the Brigade-sent tr Nicaragua by the Bolshevil Faction of the USFI in the fina weeks of the Civil War-hac created such a division anc should, therefore, be disowner immediately!

However, there are plenty of indications that they wen1 further than this-that they indi.

cated to the FSLN: in advance that they would not look unkindly upon an expulsion, and even that they effectively encouraged the physical removal of their 'comrades' from the centre of a political revolution.

In this the USFI's actions are on a par with the abhorrent attacks on the Iranian HKS by Healy's International Committee at a time when these militants are suffering the full force of the mullahs' drive to dictatorship.

The USFI did not immediately protest at the expulsion of the Simon Bolivar Brigade, preferring to characterise the very idea of the Brigade as 'grotesque' and pronounce that its formation had not been authorised by the USFI since it had:

"nothing whatever to do with Trotskyism (or) revolutionary socialism". (Militant 31/8/79).

The British IMG proclaimed the Brigade to be fraudulent and irresponsible' (Socialist Challenge 15/11/79).

Limp protest

However, when the FSLN followed the expulsion with an il-tempered tirade against 'Trotskyists' it became necessary to issue a limp protest in order to save face and cheer up the USF! current which follows Mandel, who had begun to edge nervoysly away from the more gross formulations of the SWP whilst continuing to support the substantive political line.

Thus, the expulsion began to be described as a 'mistake' made by the FSLN! See, for example, Socialist Challenge 15/11/79).

There seems little need to draw out the implications of this idiotic formulation as a tes timony to abject adaptationism'

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"Sandinista guerrillas: guns and the overthrow of Somoza do not add up to socialism ther reading International. The first issue of the basis of the dissolving of the IMT and Bulletin, whose aim is to take forward LTF and the formation of a new Majority the discussion on the principled basis for leadership, submitted to the ill-fated 11th the formation a new international tendency carries the document "The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle" adopted recently by the WSL.

Available from WSL, 31 Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR Wednesday and capitulation.

This adaptation is perfectly voiced in the loose and rambling if not deliberately misleading language employed in IP and Socialist Challenge.

In its four pages on the split in the USFI, Socialist Challenge gives over two to the question of Nicaragua, where we are told that the FSLN "fights continuously to organise the masses"* It certainly does, but and to what end?

Ambiguity

We are never told, but left to suppose that it is for the overthrow of capitalism in It seems, however, that such a stark statement might not tally with every known detailso the formulation is best left in its comfortable ambiguity!

Elsewhere the gains of the revolution are outlined in detail:

"A Sandinista Army has been established. It has drawn into its ranks many of the militias which arose in the civil war."

Perfectly true. But is it really a great step forward?

Is it now the case that the USFI considers a professional army superior to popular militias for the purposes of social revolution? Such an innovation in Marxist theory is not spelled out by the USFI-merely left implicit in their statements.

A little further on it is pointed out that three months' back wages are to be paid to workers to cover the losses they suffered during the civil war.

But the Pabloite enthusiasts omit to point out that this gain was very largely the result of the agitation of the persecuted MAP-FO-and trenchantly resisted by the regime, who argued that it would set back the process of 'reconstruction' The USFI, in fact, offers readers a constant stream of such elisions, misrepresentations and general obfuscations.

But at times the tension •becomes too great, and major political questions have to be confronted.

Thus, we read:

"A situation of dual exists in Nicaragua."

But:

*Concentration on removing bourgeois ministers would to completely mis-estimate far-reaching break that has aken place in terms of military omer, the location of the real centre of power, the character let the government measures up now, and the experiences essary for the consciousness • organisation of the masses deselop." (Socialist Challenge Challenge Well then, does dual power my exist in Nicaragua? Which the contending forces naived? Marxists have aditionally seen dual power as situation in which the dependent organisations of • working class mount challenge to the state of the capitalists.

But according to the USFI the FSLN is the revolutionary force while at the same time it is upholding the capitalist 'government of national reconstruction'!

So the dual power must exist within the governmentand we must suppose that the logical course to follow is that everyone sits back and lets the mysterious "internal process" work itself out nice and smoothly.

Indeed rather • than calling for the building of a Trotskyist party to resolve the dual power situation in the interests of the working class, the USFI actively opposes such a fight!

Indeed a USFI resolution on Nicaragua expressly calls on USFI members to liquidate any organisațion that they may still have there:

«The OST of Costa Rica and the Bolshevik Faction in particular are instructed to cease all activity in Nicaragua, including the construction of organisations, and to limit themselves to activities undertaken in collaboration with the U.Sec. and on the basis of the line of the International, As the resolution on the Nicaraguan revolution adopted by the USec. of 1 October 1979 outlined, all Nicaraguans who are members or sympathisers of the Fourth International should act las loyal militants in the framework of the organisation which led the overthrow of Somoza and leads this revolution ... to defend the fundamental ideas of revolutionary Marxism."

Criminal manner

In terms of politics alone this is a damning record. But the USFI majority went, and continues go to, beyond . thẹ practice of bankrupt polítics.

It has acted in an openly criminal manner and made a mockery of communist morality in its treasonable actions towards the Brigade.

Nevertheless, with respect to programmatic consistency and political practice the record of the USFI is scarcely bettered by that of the organisers of the Brigade- Nahuel Moreno's Bolshevik Faction,. acting through the.. Colombian PST (Socialist Workers Party).

The Columbian paper, El Socialista, provides a ready chronology of the myopic and opportunistic twists and turns of Moreno and his followers.

The first scent of "brigades in solidarity with the mass hidden away at the bottom of June an editorial calling on the bourgeois government in Colombia to break relations with Somoza.

In "the same issue the slogan of "Down with Somoza! For a Sandinista Government!" is raised along with the call for the FSLN to break from the bourgeoisie.

in July, Moreno produced the call for "a workers and peasants government based on the FSLN" which "must not mean any political support for the FSLN!" (Declaration of the Platform of the Bolshevik Faction, International Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. XVI, No. 3, July 1979, p.60).

If this line had been maintained and given a . concrete programmatic content, the Morenist cadre could have begun a major intervention within the masses and the FSLN.

But in practice they were thrown into confusion, since only a few days before E/ Socialista had carried the banner headline "All Power to the FSLN!" (El Socialista 29/6/79).

This call is very different from supporting a Sandinista government because by definition it rules out the formation of independent soviets, places all authority in the hands of the guerrillas, and implicitly defines the Sandinistas as By making such a call Moreno actually placed himself to the right. of the USFI Majority, which at this stage never ventured to such an extreme, although the logic of their positions pointed to such an end.

Before the call for the Sandinistas to take full power, the brigades were intended to fight "shoulder to. shoulder" with the FSLN, which in itself is an absolutely correct formulation.

But the call was issued in the name of:

"The bolivarian and eternal continental sentiment of oppos¡tion to tyranny ..."

This rank nonsense, culled from the hidebound ideology of the bourgeois independence struggle against. Spain, was elevated above the call for proletWorld Congress of the USFI.

Price 35p including postage arian power, paving the way for the consequent capitulation to the guerrilla forces.

Such a development was also evident in the inclusion within the Brigade of people of the widest possible political persuasion.

The PST trumpeted this fact a good deal, emphasising that the Brigade was not Trotskyist but contained the likes of spiritualists and Liberals, and was a truly pluralist body.

El Socialista even quoted, without comment, the opinion of a Colombian ex-minister. of education that:

"It is fundamental that this, brigade has a composition as heterogeneous as that of the (Nicaraguan) Provisional Junta. If this is not the case it could be counter-productive, one might fall into the grave danger of maximalism." (El Socialistil 22/6/79).

Later the Bolshevik Faction back-peddied furiously, and painted the Brigade as a 'Trotskyist' force!

The awful confusion reigning within the Bolshevik Faction at this time was further worsened by the fact that at the same time as the Brigade was to fight 'shoulder to shoulder' with the FSLN, it was also to be under the discipline of the FSLN.

Open letter

The open letter from the PST to potential volunteers stated that the Brigade would fight "under the military leadership of the FSLN" and reprinted letters from the FSLN General Staff to this effect.

Moreover, the call for volunteers made it clear that:

"the only programmatic point of the Simon Bolivar Brigade is to support the struggle of the Sandinista people " (El Sociaista 22/6/79, Bulleti emphasis added).

The placing of the Brigade under the discipline of the FSLN raises the major question of the correctness of the strategy of sending a Brigade.

The organisation of the Bolshevik Faction's political intervention in the form of a military unit meant that it was bound to be directed as an entity and as such isolated from the masses and the FSLN cadre.

Furthermore, from the very start it placed the Bolshevik Faction in a political dilemmaeither opportunism, in putting itself under the direction of the FSLN, or sectarianism, by rejecting the political (and thus military) authority of the Sandinistas.

Although sections of the Brigade did engage in fighting, the unit as a whole did not enter combat and spent the last days of the war in Costa Rica.

This, however, cannot be the basis of an attack on its politics.

It is scandalous that in attacking the Brigade the SWP, bathing in the muck of nationalism in its snide references to 'non-Nicaraguan elements' stops only just short of implying collective cowardice.

In the few weeks that it worked in Nicaragua, the Brigade concentrated on building unions and militias in Bluefields and Managua, also calling for wholesale takeovers of land and attacking the Junta and some FSLN leaders as bourgeois.

Following this new turn, which undoubtedly had its basis in the experience of working amongst a militant, leaderless, and increasingly discontented mass movement, the Brigade made a move that bore little relation to its base in the working class and inevitably led to an For the Reconstruction of the Fourth confrontation with the FSLN command •that was already showing considerable hostility.

This was the demonstration of August 15 in Managua, supported by some 3,000 workers, calling for "Power to the Proletariat!"

Expelled

The other major slogan was "The Revolution is in the hands of the Bourgeoisie!"

Within days the Brigade had been broken up and its leading members expelled as "counter-revolutionaries".. and "foreign provocateurs"

However tactically ill-conceived the demonstration might have been and whatever the method that led to its planning, the expulsion constituted a major setback for revolutionaries.

Following the failure of its project, the PST explained events in terms of the bourgeois membership of the Junta and the fact that the FSLN was not a workers or socialist party but a revolutionary nationalist movement (El Socialista 24/8/79).

This is undeniably correct, but it is abundantly clear that this proper characterisation of the FSLN and the policies that flow from it have been reached only through a series of rapid and total about-turns every bit the equal of those indulged in by the USFI majority.

Moreno has emerged from the Nicaraguan fiasco defending 'Bolshevik' positions and there is a very real danger that this will encourage illusions that he heads a bloc built on consistently revolutionary politics, which is patently not the case.

Sprightly two-step

Instead of a consistent and scientific formulation of the Trotskyist programme rigorously applied in practice Moreno has taken a sprightly two-step that has now enabled him to steal a march on those who ended up on the 'winning side' by applying exactly the same method.

This is why the tri-partite conference with the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency and Lambert's Communist Organisation for the Reconstruction of Fourth International (OCRFI) has been established on the basis of the Nicaraguan But the Fourth International cannot be reconstructed in such terms.

Moreno has blown the USFI wide open on Nicaragua and for him therefore Nicaragua has been the world from August 1979 onwards.

But what occurred before this date? Moreno's positions on Nicaragua cannot be isolated from the past anymore than can those of the USFI majority and, indeed, Moreno's past record yields a plethora of positions similar to those currently held by his opponents.

In his adherence to the method of Pabloism, Moteno has adopted the guise of a Castroite | his support for the Fidelista 'Organisation of Latin American Solidarity in the 1960s), a Maoist (he eulogised the Red Guards), and a Peronist (his paper , Palabra Obrera at one point described itself as an 'organ of revolutionary workers' Peronism' and issued 'under the discipline of General Peron').

These are 'mistakes' which Moreno is now happy to admit. But the Trotskyist programme, let alone the International, is not defended and developed by constant admissions of errors as one gaily jumps off and on the carousel of history.

Blithe self-criticism is no escape, it is simply another method of avoiding the lessons of history.

Nicaragua has added to these lessons and split asunder the USFI, which for sixteen years held together on the basis of outright opportünism.

This split creates new and more favourable conditions for the reconstruction of the Fourth International.

But the way forward consists not in choosing between positions held over Nicaragua but in the opportunity, now opened up to intervene with a sharp programmatic struggle against the bankrupt history and liquidationist method of Pabloism and opportunism.

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Trainees' refuse to eat breakfast following a suicide Officer Taylor beating up Carlin on arrival Socialist Youth League member Neil James reviews the film Scum which

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