1. The seizure of power by the New Jewel Movement (NJM) on March 13, 1979, started to destroy the semicolonial bourgeois state in Grenada, which is located in the Caribbean, a strategically key area for American imperialism. Gairy’s small army and police force were completely destroyed. This process progressed constantly towards a situation in which only the nominal ex-governor survived, completely stripped of political power. A revolutionary regime was set up and a process of social revolution was started. The forms and rhythm of these revolutionary transformations were largely determined by the objective conditions on this small island: e Extreme dependence on imperialism: e Small and extreme lack of resources; e Great weakness of the proletariat (only a few thousand stable industrial workers) side by side with a large layer of small peasants; e A relatively large layer of semi-proletarian layers (unemployed, marginal, temporary/ short-term workers, etc.). Despite these very unfavorable starting conditions, the relatively weak political organization of the population at the beginning, and the continuing destabilization efforts of imperialism and its allies in Grenada and the region, the revolutionary regime in the space of a few years was able to bring about a series of impressive gains for the toiling masses: e Chronic unemployment was radically reduced from 50% of the work force (and 70% of the women) to 12%, while in the rest of the Caribbean the basic tendency is in the opposite direction; e Over three consecutive years an impressive annual rate of growth of nearly 4% was achieved (3% in 1980, 3% in 1981, and 5.5% in 1982), the supply of running water was increased by 100%, an effort was made to begin to develop agricultural cooperatives and a start was made in planning the economy; e An important agrarian reform was initiated; e A vast education campaign meant the number of illiterates fell to 3% of the population, the percentage of school-age children benefiting from secondary education went up from 11% to 36%, and a plan was drawn up for achieving universal secondary education before the end of 1985; July 9, 1984 e The poorest 30% of the population were exempted from taxes; e Progress in the housing field with the renovation of some 18,000 houses, affecting nearly three-quarters of the entire population; ¢ Introduction, with the revolutionary help of Cuba, of a free health service for the whole population accompanied by a 100% rise in the number of doctors.
In addition to this economic and social progress, there were similarly impressive advances in democratic rights for the masses:
e Mass trade unionization of agricultural and unskilled workers, trade-union membership tripled to 90% of all wage earners on the island:
e Democratization of the trade-union structures, with regular general meetings, election of leaders, opening of trade unions’ accounts to any member wishing to consult them:
e Rapid growth of women’s and youth mass organizations which quadrupled in membership, and the setting up of a small peasants organization; e Setting up of embryonic organs of mass self-organization (zonal councils and workers parish councils) that had the power to submit the action of ministers, high-ranking civil servants, and directors to their control and disapproval. They also discussed proposed legislation and the national budget before it was adopted. The Bishop team had a project of transforming these councils into genuine organs of political power; e Building people's militia.
The rhythm adopted for the collective appropriation of the means of production was relatively slow, and the priority in economic diversification was given to the development of tourism by the building of a modern airport. This was fundamentally due to the backward objective conditions of the country and not to weaknesses or errors of the revolutionary leadership. Under such circumstances, no alternative orientation would have led to better results.
Therefore, these conditions weighed heavily on the economic choices made by the revolutionary leadership as well as on the possibility of establishing a democracy based on councils. The absence of proletarian tradition worked in the same direction.
2. Imperialism considered the formation of Maurice Bishop's revolutionary government as a serious threat, despite the small size of Grenada. This hostility, which was immediately and continually expressed by destabilization operations, was basically due to the following factors:
e The changes taking place in Grenada were likely to favor the extension of the revolutionary process to other Caribbean islands and neighboring countries in a period of sometimes explosive instability due to the economic crisis (Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Surinam, etc.); e The risk of a Grenada-Nicaragua-Cuba axis and the constitution of an international force of attraction for the masses in this region of the world: e The fact that Maurice Bishop's government was the first revolutionary government established in a Black, English-speaking country, which imperialism thought could well stimulate a process of radicalization in other parts of the world (North America, Great Britain, Black Africa). Consequently, imperialism used a duai counterrevolutionary tactic: e Preparation of direct military intervention by U.S. imperialism, allied with some of its puppet regimes in the region; e More underhanded pressure, accompanied by limited aid granted under political pressure, from European imperialists to try to progressively “neutralize” Maurice Bishop's revolutionary government. 3. The military intervention of U.S. imperialism and its puppets represents the destruction of the state created after the March 1979 victory (councils, people's army, militia, administration) and the return to colonial juridical institutions. Therefore, it is the victory of a social counterrevolution. It is a grave defeat inflicted not only on the Grenadian masses but on the overall revolutionary process in the Caribbean and the neighboring countries of the region. The initial consequences of this defeat are already making themselves felt — by the temporary consolidation of the reactionary regime in Jamaica, by the break with Cuba by Bouterse’s regime in Surinam, and by the creation of a small counterrevolutionary “relay” army in the English-speaking Caribbean around the U.S. intervention forces. However, the defeat of the Grenadian revolution is not a crushing military dictatorship type of defeat. Imperialism and its puppets are having difficulty in eliminating all the gains of the masses won between March 1979 and October 1983. Centers for mass resistance have been set up. The New Jewel Movement maintains a certain continuity around the initiative of a few survivors of the Bishop leadership. U.S. imperialism is obliged to “moderate” repression due to the disapproval its military operation has run into internationally and even in the United States. Furthermore, the test of
431 strength underway between the revolution and the counterrevolution in Central America, and the ongoing mass struggles and mass explosions like the one that occurred at the end of April 1984 in Santo Domingo, puts real limits today on the effects of U.S. imperialism’s counteroffensive.
It must be noted that this imperialist military intervention did not lead to a military confrontation with all the anti-imperialist forces — both for the reasons outlined by Fidel Castro as well as for more profound objective reasons. It would be irresponsible to reproach the Cuban leadership for this.
Undoubtedly, the risk of having to stand up alone to the U.S. military might well influence the strategy of many revolutionary oganizations in the immediate future. The way out of this impasse is the extension of the revolutionary process in the region based on the ripening of internal revolutionary crises in each country.
4. The victory of the social counterrevolution in Grenada, unleashed by the military intervention of U.S. imperialism, was facilitated in a decisive way by the seizure of power by the Coard faction of the NJM in October 1983, which overthrew Maurice Bishop's revolutionary government. The Coard faction which carried out this political counterrevolution was an authoritarian and substitutionist faction of a Stalinist type, whose bureaucratic orientation appeared clearly in the immediate measures which totally removed the toiling masses” possibility of exerting political power:
a) Hefty wage increases were granted for the army (among civil servants similar measures were proposed for party fulltimers).
b) The militia began to be disarmed.
c) It was decided to act against popular feeling expressed massively in the demand for the release of Maurice Bishop (in the council meetings, petitions in the workplaces, strikes, demonstrations, etc.).
d) There was firing on the big October 19 mass demonstration.
e) The deliberate assassination of Maurice Bishop and his closest collaborators on the orders of the Coard faction of the Central Committee and party. The soldiers were only acting on these orders.
f) The declaration of a state of emergency and the imposition of a curfew which in practice meant the neutralization of the councils and militia.
All this went in the direction of a growing militarization of the country, These measures profoundly traumatized and demobilized the Grenadian masses and meant they were incapable of responding vigorously to imperialist aggression. It even resulted in at least a fraction of the masses seeing this aggression as a lesser evil compared to the fear of an increasingly authoritarian regime installed by the Coard faction.
It is important to correctly characterize this faction as a Stalinoid one in order to understand why, even totally isolated from the masses, it nevertheless opposed the imperialist in- 432 vasion, had its army fight the invaders, and is today subject to imperialist repression.
We must denounce that repression and these abuses of the reactionary regime in Grenada while demanding that Coard and company answer for their crimes before a people's tribunal.
5. The fact that the Coard faction was able to develop inside the NJM, was able to win the majority of the Central Committee and take over the leadership reflects the type of socialeconomic pressures any ruling revolutionary organization is subject to in a backward country. It also shows the pernicious influence that the Soviet bureaucracy can exert either through its direct intervention or through its objective weight, its example and its ideological influence over political currents without great experience.
The opposition of the Coard faction to the Bishop group cannot be fundamentally explained by Coard's personal defects, his arrogance, personalization of power, or by intrigues, the use of a “secret faction,” “cliquist mentality,” not to speak of the hypothesis of manipulation by imperialism and the maneuvers of “enemy agents.” This split reflected, given the above-mentioned pressures, two diametrically different conceptions of relations between the party and the state, between the leadership of the party and the masses. between the party and masses — two different conceptions of the internal structure of the party itself. These different conceptions reflected, in a historical sense, even if only embryonically, divergent social interests, those of the proletarian masses on the one hand and those of an incipient bureaucracy on the other hand.
Furthermore, the conflict between the Coard and Bishop groups was not a recent phenomenon. Coard was a member of the Workers Party of Jamaica, a hyper-Stalinist group. and was a faithful supporter of it in the 1970s when he set up the OREL. Later OREL was dissolved into the New Jewel Movement but remained a current with another political project. The survivors of the Bishop tendency are themselves today conscious of the necessity to examine the causes of the Grenadian revolution’s defeat. They say it is a subject for discussion and debate that will last for years.
The fact that they approved the rule whereby differences that emerged (which had been the case for at least the final year) inside the Central Committee should not be presented to the party rank and file nor to the masses, undoubtedly weakened the Bishop group and facilitated the bureaucratic faction’s victory.
In a revolution like the one which had developed in Grenada, it was difficult during the first stage. for obvious objective reasons, to organize the majority of the working people in their workplaces and into bodies of political power independent of the party. The NJM itself only had a few dozen members. The seizure of power had not, strictly speaking, been preceded by a mass movement bringing about through its actions a dynamic of control and self-organization, although it immediately led to an impressive mass mobilization, mass activity, and mass organization under the impulse of the revolutionary government.
Under the circumstances, an immediate separation of party and state bodies, given the extreme narrowness of cadre, was further very difficult. In these conditions, the NJM as a whole was bound to undergo, to varying degrees, substitutionist pressures to carry forward the revolutionary process. The conflict which broke out inside the NJM expressed a qualitative differentiation in the response to be given to such social and political pressures. So, the tragic experience of the Grenadian revolution confirms the vital importance for the consolidation of a revolution of an articulation between institutionalized workers power, a correct conception of the party/state relations, and a Leninist concept of building the party (extension of proletarian base, free political discussion, capacity to launch public discussion related with key interests of masses, etc). Such an articulation, far from holding back the exercise of power by the proletariat or the consolidation of its dictatorship, is an indispensable guarantee for the safeguarding of this power both against the bourgeoisie and imperialism and the dangers of a bureaucratic process. It avoids the masses being taken by surprise by events as happened in Grenada.
The Grenadian tragedy must also help to reinforce the education of revolutionary militants throughout the world on why violence should never be used against the masses or between revolutionaries to settle political differences.
6. The main task of the Fourth International, given the victorious counterrevolution in Grenada, is to participate in the international solidarity movement with the Grenadian masses and revolutionaries against American imperialism and its puppets and to explain the reasons of the defeat, in which the Coard faction's seizure of power played a key role. We will do all we can to build this.
e Foreign troops out of Grenada now!
e Hands off the gains of the Grenadian masses!
e Immediate and unrestricted restoration of democratic rights for the masses!
The Fourth International also participates in the international movement of solidarity with the Grenadian working-class organizations and the Maurice Bishop and Martyrs of October 19th Foundation and works to defend them against any repression attempted by the reactionary regime established in Grenada. It will seek to alert its audience among vanguard layers to the increased dangers of counterrevolutionary military intervention against the Central American revolution, the Sandinista revolutionary government, and Cuba.