Nicaragua and the crisis

Scan page 8

FSEN leaders Borge, Ortega, Ramirez, Chamorro and Robelo December 13,1979 ¿omrades of Socialist Press, On behalf of the Bolshevik Faction in Britain I would appreciate your publishing the following very brief answer to Comrade Don Frint's article "Nicaragua and the Crisis in the USec" printed in No. 178 (5.12.79) of Socialist Press.

There are a number of questions which I will not even touch and just refer you to our bulletin Nos. 1, 2 and 3 (plus everything else in Spanish). It You haves based tour faride on is very brief and partial.

Your analysis .of our positions regarding for example: the government slogan, the workers organisations,, dual power, the LMR, military discipline and political independence -even the actual objective situa tion-is extremely inaccurate and irresponsible.

Your interpretation of the Permanent: Revolution itself seems to be done in the same careless way since you ignore Trotsky's position on the possibility of the seizure of power by petty-bourgeois nationalistamovements or other non-Trotskyist forces as occured in Vietnam, Cambodia lat one time or other), Yugoslavia, China, etc. China, it that you do not regard these to be deformed workers' states? Unfortunately, I will not be able to take on any of these questions and others you mention because i must be brief.

What was the purpose of your article in presenting a slanted version of the developments in the Trotskyist. movement around the Nicaraguan The main point your article attempts to make is that the Bolshevik Faction split with the USec to continue "Moreno's past record (which) yields a plethora of positions similar to those currently held by his opponents".

Meaning to say that since it is these "opportunists" who are organising the Conference for the regroupment: (reconstruction) of the Fourtn International, it "cannot be reconstructed in such terms"

You argue for the rejection of the Conference by putting an equal sign between it and the Usec without even mentioning the political basis on which the Conference is being called and what precisely are • your differences with it.

Might it be because you refuse to accept that you and ! : agree on the main points of principle as applied to Might it be that you refusé to accept reality as you do when you say that in Nicaragua the FSLN was not the one who led the masses, arms in hand, to defeat Somoza?

Since you do not base your analysis on the class struggle and its effect on the different organisations existing within the working class, the explanation which you arrive, at for the split is one of machiavelian manoeuvres.

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

• The facts, comrade, are that it has been the Nicaraguan revolution which has lead the American SWP and USec to totally capitulate to the bourgeois Government of National.

Reconstruction and Castroism;

thus supporting the repression of other USec members who were there precisely to buitd a section of the Fourth, International. I! understand your organisation agrees with this.

So the expulsion of the Simon Bolivar Brigade divided waters: the USec agreed with it and the Bolshevik Faction, Leninist Trotskyist Tendency, OCREI, WSL, ICL, Workers Power, etc. condemned it.

It is on this and the political analysis of the Government of National Reconstruction as bourgeois, the FSLN's class collaboraționism, Castro's support for these, etc-that the possibility of regroupment or reconstruction exists.

A new situation has emerged in which the BF, OCREI, LTT, ICL have agreed that we must fight the USec's Castroism and organise a democratic conference where the entire Trotskyist movement can participate on the basis of our principles posed in the Declaration.

The way forward is by intervening in the class struggle constructing the Fourth International's international leadership and sections with those with whom we have principled and programmatic agreements.

It is very easy, backward and sectarian to seizę on every detail to broaden and deepen existing differences on questions which have passed into history.

On the Brigade for example, you say that "the brigades were intended' to fight 'shoulder to shoulder' with the FSLN which in itself is an absolutely correct formula"

Before Somoza fell, Socialist Press had articles attacking the FSLN as guerrillaist, sectarian, etc. But what is our attitude toward this and other changes in your positions? without discussion, in a hasty and worthless "regroupment" that. would take place without genuine political agreement, and amount to a farcical repetition of the "Reunification" of 1963.

The events in Nicaragua have only brought the revisionist positions of the SWP/USFI to the surface.

In reality those positions emerged not in 1979 but have been carried over from the whole period of political compromise and cover-up sincê the USFI itself was formed-on the basis of agreement on the single issue of Cuba-in 1963.

If the comrades of the Bolshevik Faction _ wish to defend the record of. their leadership in the Nicaraguan events, and to argue the consistency and correctness of their slogans and orientation, they are welcome to submit their case against the account presented Somoza before the fall: We welcome the fact that now you have a correct one. We understand the class struggle has an effect on people and can change them.

• The Nicaraguan revolution has triggered off all sorts of politics.

The Fl has split and its reconstruction-will be through regroupment-through leaps and bounds as the theory of unequal and combined development points out.

It is our duty to regroup with those who defend the Trotskyist programme and principles fighting those who abandon them. It is through this and its daily application in the cláss struggle that we shall reconstruct the Fl.

Monica Sandinista guerrillas by Don Flint. In this way a constructive " discussion can take place.

But the WSL will not be deterred from raising in that discussion basic issues of method and assessments of the political evolution of tendencies which * today put themselves forward as the voice of orthodox Trotskyism.

If "the theory of unequal and combined development" really has any relevance to the fight for the reconstruction of the FI, it is possibly in the fact that other tendencies-far larger numerically, than the WSL -have been far slower than us to recognise the necessity to base such a reconstruction on an objective discussion of the postwar crisis of Trotskyism, from which common programmatic positions that break decisively from the opportunist deviations of the past can and must be derived.