[The Nicaraguan dictatorship of General Somoza and his…]

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The Nicaraguan dictatorship of General Somoza and his dynasty has lasted for 40 years. Last week it looked as if its days were nearly over.

For four days the country was virtually at a stanstill as a result of a general stoppage of work.

Leaders of all the legal and semi-legal parties called for the immediate resignation of Somoza as a condition of ending the work stoppage.

It is not in any ordinary sense a strike since it is supported by the main bourgeois parties and the employers' organisation and many workers are continuing to be paid.

Corrupt These capitalist, landowing and other conservative forces want to replace one anti-working class form of rule (Somoza's dictatorship) with another (some form of limited bourgeois democracy).

Somoza's prospects have seemed shaky for over a year, as US imperialism found its alliance with his brutally repressive and corrupt regime an increasing international embarassment and Carter looked for new pro-imperialist forces to attach himself to.

He hit upon a right wing "democratic" opposition led by a newspaper editor Chomorro.

Economic power

Chomorro had the support of sizeable sections of Nicaraguan capitalists and landowners.

For them this is seen as a struggle against the unbelievable economic power of Somoza and his family- who own 20,000 square kilometres of land and a huge proportion of the country's manufacturing and service industries, and who have granted themselves all kinds of commercial advantages through their political dictatorship.

Two weeks ago Chommoro was assassinated, it is presumed by Somoza's agents.

This was the spark which set off a wave of nation wide anti-Somoza agitation.

This This is in part a popular movement which the landowners and capitalists are desperately trying to control by appearing to put themselves at the head of it.

Disarray

In this situation of crisis and disarray for the Nicaraguan ruling class, a united and independent struggle of the working class and the peasants could overthrow all the factions of the capitalists and landowners.

But the workers and peasants still lack a leadership which is ready to undertake that task.

The Stalinists of the Nicaraguan Communist Party, far from fighting for an independent workers' struggle, stand side by side with the conservatives and other reactionaries in the anti-Somoza Democratic Freedom Union (UDEL).

alliance UDEL, which is trying to lead the present agitation, wants to set up a different capitalist government which, like Somoza, will make a close alliance with US imperialism.

The other main party which claims to offer leadership to the oppressed classes is the Castroist Sandinist Liberation Front (named after Sandino, an anti-imperialist guerrilla leader of the 1930s).

The FSL, as it is known, has for the last ten years put up an intermittent guerrilla struggle against the regime.

Material aid

Its small army (never more than 200 or so) has use d the General Somoza - kept in office through the political weakness of the opposition forces.

mountains and sometimes the territory of neighbouring Costa Rica and Honduras for shelter. And it has received some material aid from Cuba.

Many of its members have been captured and are in jail. And at the end of 1976 some of its main leaders were killed.

Bolder actions

But recently the organisation has reappeared on the political scene, carrying out bolder guerrilla actions in the towns.

There is no doubt that the FSL has a good deal of passive popular support.

But it has shown itself completely incapable of offering any programme on which the workers and peasants can unite and go forward.

The border war between Vietnam and Kampuc hea (formerly Cambod: ia) is continuing though most recent reports fail to bear out earlier ones about the massive scale of the fighting.

The Kampuchean leaders are now described by the Vietnamese as "reactionaries"

A clear hint is given that the Vietnamese want to see the overthrow of the present pro-Chinese leadership group under Pol Pot.

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мОАД GENERA EL PALTO U MONCLDA iKL." iT- SKi On the question of trade unions, as on all other policial questions, Spain's "democratic" Francoist government is action among themselves. They must confine themselves to their own workplace.

There are separate commi ttees for manual workers and 140A0 Workers march against the Moncloa Pact unionists and closed to management which reject the regime's norms and all state interference in the labour movement must be organised in place of the regime's mock This does not necessarily mean a total boycott of all elections which take place according to the governPage This contrasts sharply the position taken by "Trotskyist" section of USFI, the Revolutio Communist League (LCR Although they say tha norms favour the capil and criticise the Wor Commissions and UGT accepting them, the characterises the elect themselves as a "gain" w the government has "forced" to concede.

Unconditional

It has therefore, advoc unconaltional participatic the elections along witl effort to make them "r democratic" and unitary.

It has argued for cha in the norms in much same way as the UGT Workers' Commission leac And its suggestions uncannily similar to thos the Stalinist leaders of Commissions.

Every opportunity to 1 for the demands of Transitional Programme t of porkers committee adopted in discarded by these self-st "Trotskyists" in favour some minor quantita adjustments to the cons tion proposed by