During the thirteen months that have passed since the insurrection and over throw of Somoza, the revolutionary process has deepened in Nicaragua.
Between April and August 1980 new thresholds were crossed. The advance of the revolution was shown by the whole series of economic and social measures taken by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), in its firm stance in face of the bourgeoisie's demands concerning crucial political questions (such as the composition of the Council of State and, still more important, the holding of elections), and in the consolidation of the FSLN's hegemony in the exercise of political power.
The specific situation of dual power that arose in July 1979 has nonetheless still not been resolved. But the showdown is approaching. The decisive test of strength with the bourgeoisie is taking shape in a context marked by growing civil war in El Salvador and by the determination of U.S. imperialism to stem the revolutionary upsurge in Central America.
1. The armed struggle led by the FSLN, the general strike, and finally the popular insurrection (with the development of popular militias and the Civil Defense Committees) gave rise to a special situation of dual power. As in any such situation, authority was not shared equally from the outset. The relationship of class forces and the very results of the battle against the dictatorship meant that from July 1979 on the coercive instruments of the state apparatus—the new army (EPS) and the new police—were in the hands of the FSLN. The Panamanian military and police advisers were put to one side. Formation of militias was encouraged. Having thus strengthened its control, the FSLN initiated the phase of "national reconstruction."
This exclusion of bourgeois forces from any control over the repressive apparatus of the state, along with their weakness at the institutional and political levels, express the particular nature of this very unequal division of authority. The coalition government installed on July 19, 1979, reflected this as well.
The bourgeoisie, organized in the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) and various professional organizations, nonetheless retained a series of positions that found their extension at the level of political power. They had a significant presence in sectors of the state apparatus (administration, judicial apparatus, ministries) and effective representation on the Junta of National Reconstruction (Robelo and Chamorro). Given the relatively limited extent of the measures expropriating Somoza and his allies, the bourgeoisie also had important economic strongholds.
While holding a few trump cards, the anti-Somoza bourgeoisie sought to utilize its posts in the state apparatus, its participation in the struggle against Somoza, and the aid of the top Catholic hierarchy and the daily La Prensa, to promote itself to the rank of full partner with the FSLN. It tried to exploit its control over large sectors of the economy (80 percent of industry and 75 percent of agriculture) to assure the supremacy of the market system and to obtain political and institutional concessions. The bourgeoisie counted on the support of its Latin American counterparts and imperialism in this effort.
At the end of September 1979 the FSLN itself declared: "In fact, the financial and economic sector of the state—with the exception of the implementation of the agrarian reform—is in the hands of the bourgeoisie."
The FSLN's response at various stages of the class struggle has resulted in reducing still further the bourgeoisie's points of support inside the country.
2. In the latter months of 1979 the FSLN completed the first measures expropriating the Somozaist sector. It created the Natural Resources Institute (IN-RENA), nationalized first the banks and then the insurance companies (which gave the state still greater control over the financial sector), nationalized the mining industry, and, by means of a November 3 decree, integrated all the state enterprises responsible for the export and the distribution on the domestic market of key products such as cotton, coffee, sugar, beef, marine products, basic foodstuffs, fertilizers and agrochemical products, bananas, and petroleum.
Besides all these measures, the resignation of the government in early December led to the FSLN's reinforcing its direct control over the most important ministries, naming Humberto Ortega as minister of defense, Edén Pastora as vice-minister of defense in charge of the militias, Henry Ruiz as minister of planning, and Jaime Wheelock as head of the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MIDA). The latter was to centralize the sectors involved in the production and processing of agricultural products. Constant efforts were made to organize and mobilize the masses—the agricultural workers and poor peasants, the working class, the youth, and women.
Taken as a whole, these decisions showed the FSLN's willingness to develop the embryos of the new power that had appeared in the course of the popular insurrection (the Sandinista Defense Committees [CDSs], the Sandinista People's Army, and the militias), and to broaden its control over the various parts of a disorganized state apparatus.
3. Attempting to involve the anti-Somoza bourgeoisie in the task of "national reconstruction" and obtain credit from international financial institutions and imperialist governments, the FSLN granted some real concessions to the industrialists and landlords. These included explicit recognition of the role of the private sector in the "economic reactivation plan," loans to private enterprises, unification of exchange rates, the sale of foreign currency, agreements on price and wage levels, and so on.
At the end of 1979 and the beginning of 1980, the FSLN carried out a campaign around the theme of "national unity." But the contradictions that were ripening in the first months of the new year would accelerate the timetable:
A. Following on the heels of their victory over Somoza, the agricultural workers and poor peasants began a series of mobilizations in early 1980 against sabotage by the bosses and the big landowners, for extension of state control over industry, for wage increases and improvements in working conditions, for the full exercise of trade-union rights, for the expropriation of fallow lands, and for the deepening of the agrarian reform. The effort to gain wage increases resulted from the drop in real income in 1978-79 and the inflation of previous months. It was all the stronger in that while the workers could feel their own power, the distribution of the increase in social wages was too slow to hold back demands for money increases.
B. Capitalist smuggling into Honduras and Costa Rica accelerated, as did the practice of overbilling imports and underbilling exports. The volume of imports was difficult to control. All this was made easier by the close ties between the employers' organizations in Nicaragua and their counterparts in the Central American Common Market.
The lack of adequate supplies of consumer goods, particularly of agricultural and manufactured products, created favorable conditions for parallel markets and speculation, thus nourishing inflation. The imports required to counteract these tendencies accentuated the disequilibrium in the balance of payments. Price controls "encountered serious difficulties. . . ."
The state does not control a dominant sector of distribution and thus cannot rationally distribute the supply of basic goods. Also, the laws of the market not only determine prices that favor middlemen at the expense of producers but also reestablish direct distribution channels to favor those social layers with higher incomes. . . . Besides that, the popular mechanisms for controlling supplies, in which the CDSs must play a central role, have not developed. [Balance Sheet on the First Trimester of the Plan, Ministry of Planning, May 15, 1980.]
C. Important sectors of the economy in the hands of the capitalists and landlords did not respond to the demands of the economic plan, despite plentiful credit: "The information available on the private sector is quite limited. We consider its own investments to be minimal, not enough to attain the 470 million córdoba goal" (Ministry of Planning). Underutilization of productive capacity was significant. The private construction sector alone (controlled by the Nicaraguan Chamber of Construction) was operating at an estimated 77 percent of capacity for the first three months of 1980. The effects of such investment stagnation on exports and the creation of jobs can only be negative.
D. Despite the measures taken in 1979, the management of economic development remained basically uncontrolled, owing to the predominant weight of private property, to the still-insufficient control over the state apparatus as a whole, and to the contradictions inherent in any "mixed economy" project. Among the defects in economic policy cited by the Ministry of Planning, the following must be singled out:
Overestimation of the state's capacity—while we based ourselves on the premise that there was a sufficiently centralized economic management in the financial sector . . . the state was seen to be dominated in reality by a short-term policy, seeking to extend itself generally to all spheres of the economy, and to satisfy all classes and social groups, without recognizing the limits and contradictions. . . .
4. The tensions brought on by the demands of the masses and the economic contradictions grew stronger during the first half of 1980. The FSLN leadership responded, not with economic or political retreat, but with new initiatives:
A. Beginning in February the broad outlines of the organization of the people's militias were set forth.
B. Decrees were adopted in March that called for penalties against merchants, industrialists, and landlords in order to halt decapitalization and sabotage of all kinds. A campaign was launched to encourage the workers to oppose sabotage and take measures of workers control. Against speculation, the FSLN encouraged popular control over prices.
C. At the end of March the immense five-month-long literacy campaign was launched. This was exceptionally important not only for the politization and organization of tens of thousands of young literacy teachers, but also and above all because it allowed the FSLN to consolidate its influence over broad layers of agricultural workers and poor peasants, thus reinforcing popular mobilization.
D. Land occupations by poor peasants and agricultural workers were formalized. A rent ceiling was established by law for lands used in basic-grain and cotton cultivation. An important effort was launched to broaden the organization of small proprietors, the rural poor, and agricultural laborers (cooperatives, expansion of the Rural Workers Association [ATC]).
E. After the assassination of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, the FSLN denounced the military junta there and reinforced its solidarity with the organizations in the Revolutionary Coordinating Committee.
F. The alliance with the Cuban workers state was forcefully reaffirmed. FSLN delegations visited the Soviet Union and the "people's democracies." In the framework of tension between Cuba and U.S. imperialism, heightened by the revolutionary upsurge in Central America and the Caribbean, the evolution of Sandinista foreign policy became a new factor in the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the FSLN.
5. All these measures together gave rise to sharp reactions among the bourgeoisie, which saw its area of understanding with the FSLN melting away before its eyes. The bourgeoisie demanded regulation of the relations between workers and employers and an end to all encroachments on private property. It denounced the growing prerogatives of the CDSs closely tied to the FSLN, "which contradict the existence of a state of law and accustom citizens to solving their problems outside of the normal institutional channels that the law sanctions and protects" (COSEP document).
The bourgeoisie focused its energies on relaunching its main political formation, the Nicaraguan Democratic Movement (MDN), led by Alfonso Robelo, a member of the Junta. It sought to reinforce its ties to the petty and middle bourgeoisie, especially in commerce and agriculture. It sought to make use of its relations with the imperialists and the Latin American bourgeoisies, in order to have foreign loans serve as an element for consolidating the capitalist sector and as a political weapon for subordinating the socio-economic program of the FSLN to its demands. In March, the bourgeoisie concentrated its attacks on the politization of the literacy campaign and on the necessity of organizing "free and democratic elections."
In this context, the battle took place over the composition and nature of the Council of State, whose convocation was set for the beginning of May.
The FSLN answered the campaign of Robelo and the MDN by emphasizing the anti-Somoza bourgeoisie's "last minute" participation in the battle against the dictatorship and the FSLN's own hegemonic role in leading the revolution. It put the accent on the real social and economic conditions for democracy for the masses, and on the economic sabotage by the capitalists that lay behind their professions of "democratic" faith.
The FSLN did not retreat. It assured itself and the mass organizations of a majority in the Council of State, whose purely consultative role was reaffirmed. Upon the announcement of the composition of the council, Robelo—the representative of the private sector in the Junta of National Reconstruction—submitted his resignation on April 22. Violeta Chamorro had done the same three days earlier. Archbishop Obando joined the fray, demanding the resignation of all priests who held official posts. In face of this open crisis in the coalition—a new exacerbation of the antagonisms within the state that are characteristic of a duality of powers— the FSLN held to its course by convoking the Council of State. It clearly showed its intention to reinforce its position on the political and institutional levels and stepped up its denunciations of Robelo.
At the same time, the FSLN announced its respect for the "mixed economy" and "political pluralism" and lifted the state of emergency that had just been extended to April 1981. A series of legislative measures were taken with the aim of reassuring the private sector. Pushed into a corner, the COSEP finally decided to send its representatives to the opening session of the Council of State on May 4. Finally, on May 20, the FSLN leadership itself designated—much to the COSEP's indignation—the replacements for Robelo and Chamorro in the Junta: Rafael Córdova, a leader of the Democratic Conservative Party and member of the Supreme Court, and Arturo Cruz, director of the Central Bank and a former official of the Inter-American Development Bank.
The crisis opened by Robelo's resignation demonstrated the true relationship of forces. It provoked fissures and sowed disarray in the ranks of the bourgeoisie.
6. Strengthened by the points scored in this test of political strength, the FSLN renewed its proposals for the participation of the "patriotic bourgeoisie" in the reconstruction effort. The latter was trying to do what it could to use its position in production and the resources that imperialism and the Latin American bourgeoisies could provide. In this framework, the meaning for the bourgeoisie of the appointment of Cruz and Córdova can be understood. The international financial circles responded favorably to these appointments.
Their manner of joining the Junta—pure and simple appointment by the FSLN—expressed the way the relationship of forces had changed to the detriment of the bourgeoisie. The two new appointees did not have the same representative relationship with the bourgeoisie that Robelo and Chamorro had had. Their presence in the governmental apparatus reflected the unstable compromise with the private sector and the imperialist financial institutions that the FSLN was trying to prolong after the April crisis.
Cruz openly explained his political perspectives to La Prensa:
I firmly believe that any government. . . must be the product of a popular election. ... I have already said that both the action taken by Alfonso Robelo and the initiative of COSEP has had positive results. The state of emergency has been ended and the due-process law adopted. There is no doubt in my mind that the government's firm decision is to put a system of mixed economy into effect. . . . [May 26, 1980.]
The COSEP finally resigned itself to Cruz's appointment in order to preserve a point of support at the top of the state institutions.
7. The concessions made by the FSLN after April are a result of the relationship of forces. They do not mark the replacement of class struggle with class peace. Social and economic tensions have put new confrontations on the agenda. The FSLN is using its position of strength to counter the private sector.
The unfolding of the agrarian reform sharply poses a threefold problem:
• It accentuates the land needs of the small proprietors and poor peasants. But disorderly land occupations risk disrupting production and make the effective integration of the occupied lands into the agrarian reform quite difficult.
• It increases the state's need for an adequate area of cultivable land in order to centralize productive activities and make the transformation as smooth as possible.
• It brings to light the need to closely coordinate the cooperatives and the state-run sectors, so as to assure the MIDA of maximum control over the agricultural surplus.
This is why a stabilization or a pause in the agrarian reform is impossible. Jaime Wheelock explained this clearly on July 14 in offering a balance sheet on the revolution in the countryside: "It is necessary to seek out areas into which the state sector can expand, since the farms we now possess are nearly all separated in what we might call an anarchic way. This leads to enormous problems of time, economy, administration, and development." Concluding on the question of wildcat land seizures, Wheelock said "the lands the state now holds are insufficient."
At the same time, the main economic weaknesses revealed in the first quarter of the year were reconfirmed in the second. The need for state industry in the key sectors (agrochemicals, for example) was urgently felt. The necessity of a "new conception" in the 1981 economic plan was announced by Humberto Ortega and at the big August 23 rally closing the first stage of the literacy campaign.
Once it recovered its wind, the bourgeoisie relaunched its campaign for free elections and a constituent assembly in 1981. It sought in this way to rally broad layers of the petty and middle bourgeoisie. It put top priority on building opposition with the support of sectors of the peasantry in several regions. The bourgeoisie's hopes for reestablishing its positions rest on a defeat of the workers, peasants, and revolutionary organizations in El Salvador, and on direct or indirect aid from imperialism. Sectors of COSEP were mixed up in the subversive efforts of former defense minister Bernardino Larios.
8. The FSLN's response shows once again that it is not willing to have the revolution held back:
A. On July 19, the first anniversary of the revolution, the FSLN announced that all fallow land or lands not adequately cultivated could be immediately expropriated. This decision is an additional weapon against the landlords who prefer to let their holdings go unused instead of renting them out at the low prices set by law. In the context of the unfolding class struggle in the countryside, this measure is likely to strengthen support for the revolution among the poor peasants and agricultural laborers.
On July 11, against COSEP's opposition, a decree-law imposed an increase in the minimum wage. This decision followed the launching of a "plan of struggle" by the ATC and the Sandinista Workers Federation (CST). State control was established on the import and distribution of petroleum. To diminish the volume of exports, allocation of foreign currency to the capitalists was restricted.
B. The people's militias, which had been built for several months in the enterprises and farms, were the centerpiece of the July 19 anniversary celebrations, along with the Sandinista People's Army. To give full meaning to the mobilization against armed reaction and to encourage popular vigilance, the militias have been called up to fight the counterrevolutionary commandos along the Honduran border and the plots of the Somozaists.
C. On August 23, before tens of thousands of young literacy teachers, Humberto Ortega read the Sandinista leadership's statement in response to the bourgeoisie's campaign for elections and a constituent assembly:
1. For the Sandinista Front democracy is not measured solely in political terms, and is not reducible only to the participation of the people in elections. Democracy is not simply elections— it is something more, much more.
For a revolutionary, for a Sandinista, democracy means participation by the people in political, economic, social, and cultural affairs. The more the people participate in such matters, the more democratic they will be. It must be said once and for all—democracy neither begins nor ends with elections. It is a myth to want to reduce democracy to such a condition. Democracy begins in the economic order, when social inequalities begin to diminish, when the workers and peasants improve their living standards. That is when true democracy begins, not before.
Once such objectives are achieved, democracy is immediately extended to other terrains: the field of government is broadened, the people have influence on their government, the people determine their government—whether this be pleasing or not.
In a more advanced phase, democracy means workers participation in the management of the factories, farms, cooperatives, and cultural centers. To summarize, democracy is the intervention of the masses in all aspects of social life. We point all this out to set down on a principled basis what the Sandinista National Liberation Front understands democracy to be.
Moreover, the Sandinista Front recognizes constructive criticism as the only fruitful form of criticism. Disagreement and pluralism continue to be essential components of Sandinista democracy. But the FSLN points out that the criticisms that must be taken into account are fundamentally those made by the working people, because they are the most disinterested, genuinely sincere, and revolutionary ones.
2. The National Directorate of the Sandinista National Liberation Front reaffirms before the Nicaraguan people and the world that the revolutionary process our country is currently going through will not be turned back. It will continue its march to the ultimate consequences. There should not be the slightest doubt that it is a revolution that is now under way, and that it was to make a revolution that the Sandinista National Liberation Front took power July 19, 1979, after eighteen years of struggle and at a cost of nearly 100,000 lives.
3. The responsibility we assumed in leading the liberation war led us to study the concrete reality of our country. In that way we were able to grasp the state of economic, social, and moral destruction and backwardness that the triumphant revolution found the country in.
Therefore we considered with all seriousness that upon achieving victory we should begin a process of national reconstruction as the first big step of the Sandinista People's Revolution.
4. Once in power, the Sandinista Front, as the authentic vanguard and the guide of Nicaraguan people, decided to install a Junta of Government that would organize and head the management of government, supported by the work of the people, in order to make national reconstruction possible.
5. After one year of the revolution, we can responsibly affirm that the moral, social, and economic destruction and backwardness of the country is of such depth and magnitude that it cannot be expected that the country will be reconstructed before 1985. Thus the National Directorate of the Sandinista Front has decided that the organized Junta of Government will have to remain at the head of governmental management until 1985.
6. Therefore, our working people, our workers and peasants, our youth and women, the professionals and patriotic businessmen dedicated to national reconstruction, should be prepared in 1985 to decide on the program of government and choose the best individuals of the country, who will take charge of the government and continue carrying forward the tasks of our revolution. . . .
D. Finally, three new laws open the way for intervention in various fields against the plots of the bourgeoisie. The designation of candidates for elections has been banned until the electoral commission is set up in 1984. Propaganda campaigns to foment speculation and the black market were neutralized by the imposition of censorship halting this type of information. And rumormongering about military confrontations, aimed at creating a climate of insecurity, was halted by the application of a similar decree.
The course of events since April has undermined the perspective that the entry of Cruz and Córdova into the Junta might have represented for the bourgeoisie.
9. On the whole, these measures mark a new step forward by the Sandinista leadership. They illustrate the extreme narrowing of any area of understanding between the FSLN and significant sectors of the bourgeoisie.
The formation of a consultative Council of State with a worker-peasant majority, the refusal to bend to the COSEP's demands in the choosing of replacements for Robelo and Chamorro, the rejection of the bourgeoisie's calls for elections in 1981, and, at the same time, the affirmation that the development of the embryos of the new power take precedence over elections (which in fact must ratify the power of the mass organizations), the repeated affirmation of the predominance of the National Directorate over the official governmental organs, the deepening of the agrarian reform, and the generalization of the militias—all these elements combined demonstrate the existence in Nicaragua of a government that is based on the workers and peasants and that affirms its independence in face of the bourgeoisie. This is a workers and peasants government, a brief episode on the way toward the installation of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In effect, the decisive test of strength between the classes has still not taken place. The resolution of the specific situation of dual power—which would imply a change in the class nature of state power, socialization of the principal means of production, and the planned centralization of accumulation—is still to come.
The Nicaraguan revolution has been able to benefit from the crisis of imperialism and the accompanying exacerbation of interbourgeois contradictions at the national and international levels. The existence of the Cuban workers state is an important help in the success of the Nicaraguan revolution. The latter, in turn, opens a breach in the twenty-year imperialist encirclement of the Cuban revolution.
In this first stage, the FSLN has been able to utilize this international situation to improve the relationship of forces vis-à-vis its domestic and foreign enemies. But the very process of the Nicaraguan revolution and its effects on Central America and the Caribbean contribute to modifying this context. The room for maneuver is diminishing.
U.S. imperialism is not ready to accept the extension of the socialist revolution in this region. It is multiplying its efforts to consolidate the power of the bourgeoisie in Guatemala and Honduras, to help the Salvadoran junta to stem the revolutionary upsurge there, and to forge an alliance among the reactionary forces of Central America, Venezuela, and Colombia.
At the same time, the imperialists continue to utilize financial credit to keep the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie alive and to prepare its ranks with the perspective of future battles in which the breadth of the forces involved will largely be determined by the outcome of the Salvadoran revolution.
10. After one year, the Sandinista leadership has victoriously met the test and responded to each new challenge from the bourgeoisie with a new advance of the revolution.
The workers and peasants, under the leadership of the FSLN, will not accept seeing their conquests threatened by the counterrevolution. They will know how to mobilize to defend their gains and thus aid the struggles of the peoples of Central America. They will no longer accept seeing their organizations and power of decision strengthened in the political sphere on the one hand and on the other come up against the bosses' authority in the work places and sabotage attempts by the private owners.
Workers control over production and the nationalization of the key sectors will become more and more necessary for effective planning of production and managed distribution of social wealth.
To the bourgeoisie's campaign for immediate free elections, the Sandinista leadership rightly responded that true democracy for the masses begins at the economic level (with the abolition of exploitation and oppression) and at the level of education (with literacy and the right to instruction). But all historical experience shows how such democracy, to be broadened, must be based on the mass organizations—the committees, militias, unions, and associations.
The struggle to deepen the revolutionary process takes place through:
• Reinforcement of the mass organizations and their capacity to truly express the collective will of the workers and mobilize the living forces of the revolution.
• The democratic functioning of such organs; that is, the possibility for the various currents in the workers movement to express themselves within them, and the right of the workers themselves to decide the broad options of their organizations and elect their leaders at all levels. Such workers democracy is essential for trade-union unification, which would assure greater implantation of the FSLN among the ranks of the workers.
• Centralization of organs of proletarian democracy, through which the masses can resolve the central political, social, and economic questions and elect revocable representatives at the national level. The extension and centralization of the functions of the CDSs and unitary organs such as the Economic Reactivation Assemblies would be a step in this direction.
• The recognized vanguard of the Nicaraguan revolution has been forged in the Sandinista Front through its laborious battle against the dictatorship. The tasks of the revolution pose to this conscious vanguard the problem of its constitution as a party. Only the democratic centralization of this party can assure the greatest unity in action and the free debate necessary for confronting future challenges.
The Fourth International reaffirms its support to the Nicaraguan revolution led by the FSLN. It commits itself to continue its campaign of international solidarity carried out throughout the past year in many countries.