What went wrong in the New
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987 time, the number of people who at. tended these meetings declined
These meetings were democratic in the sense that they allowed ample discussions and input. But they didn't make any fundamental decisions. This power was not in the hands of these institutions.
Jewel Movement
A. That is correct.
Q. How did the party see the relationship between the NJM and the mass organizations?
The relationship was one where the NJM played - or should have
THE FOLLOWING is an interview with Don Rojas, the former press secretary to Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.
Rojas is currently a representative of the Maurice Bishop Patriotic
Movement to the 10-party coordinating committee of the Anti-
Imperialist Organizations of the Caribbean and Central America. He recently completed a five-city US tour, during which he spoke on
"The freedom struggle in the Caribbean and Central America today."
The interview was conducted in San Francisco on January 15 by Jeff Mackler, national secretary of Socialist Action. It first appeared in the February 1987 issue of Socialist Action newspaper, published in San Francisco.
of the defeated Grenadian Revolution. I'd like to focus on questions that are seldom discussed by the left
The revolution was overthrown by the US imperialist army. But by the time the invading troops landed, the revolution had been delivered a death blow when Maurice Bishop and his comrades were assassinated by the
Coard faction in the New
Movement (NJM).
How do you account for the fact that when crucial differences arose within the Central Committee of the
NJM over the questions of the leadership of the revolution, there appeared to be no mechanisms within the party itself to resolve these differences?
How did the NJM function? What was its membership? How did it make
Answer. During the years of the from 1979 to 1983, the membership of the party expanded.
But looking at the problems that it did not expand fast enough. So that by the time the crisis in the party came to a head in October the membership of 320 full, and applicant members was too small and too narrow in its social and class composition. It did not have among its ranks enough members of the working class or of the patriotic farmers and peasantry.
That was one of the major structural weaknesses of the NJM in 1983
The party was structured along the lines of a typical Marxist-oriented party. It had a Central Committee
22 and a Political Bureau. It attempted to carry out internal party discussions and decision-making based on the principle of democratic centralism.
But what happened was that this principle was distorted in many cases to the point where we did not have the balance of democracy and centralism that should take place for this principle to work.
Mechanisms that were theoretically in place did not function to facilitate the broadest possible democratic involvement of all party members in
The truly democratic application of centralism would call for the leading bodies of the party to be elected by the party members. But in our case, the NJM's Central Committee and the Political Bureau were never elected by the rank and file of the party. This is simply because there was never a congress of the party. In hindsight, this was a fundamental error.
The party leaders enjoyed support and approval of the rank and file by virtue of their authority — but they were not elected. They were not in any way accountable to the party rank and file and to the rest of the people of Grenada.
Q. It seems that one of the was no way to resolve differences outside of the smaller group in the. party. It also appears that the mass institutions that existed had no real power.
I attended some of the zonal and parish council meetings in Grenada. I understand that over a period of played — a guiding role in the development and direction that the mass organizations were to take. empower the mass organizations and institutionalize them as organs of people's power that would play not just a participatory role, but a decision-making role, in carrying out policies presented by the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG).
This was the objective behind the establishment of a new constitution - a people's constitution - that was drafted by the democratic involvement of the masses and the mass organiza.
This process, unfortunately, had only just begun at the time the revolution collapsed.
Today I am very heartened by the successful conclusion, in Nicaragua, of the process that has led to the approval of the new constitution. That is exactly how we, in Grenada, had envisioned a truly democratic people's constitution evolving.
Maurice Bishop used to joke about how, under the parliamentary democracy of the United States and Great Britain, lever once every four years. He said he envisioned a society where the actual decision-making power rested in the hands of the people and their organizations on a day-to-day basis.
Nicaragua is obviously a popular revolution, like Grenada was.
Nicaraguan unions and mass organizations are essentially participa-
The FSLN makes the final decisions. The FSLN is as concerned as you are about factionalism. But from everything I saw during my recent visit, and from everything I in Nicaragua an institutionalized strucworkers' control whereby the masses can rule through their own organizations.
A. I think the challenge before us is to find a formula that guarantees that the people can participate in national decision-making either through their popular organizations or through their parliamentary representatives - while at the same time
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GRENADA
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987 maintaining the important role that the vanguard party has to play in pushing the revolution forward.
There are no schemas or formulas that can or should be followed. You can learn from all the experiences of revolutions, but in the final you have to proceed based vail in your own country.
One of the mistakes that we made in Grenada is the importance of taking into conall times. I think too much subjectivism began to creep into the NJM and into the thinking of the leadership of the NJM.
That subjectivism, fueled by individual ambitions, led unfortunately to a series of events and decisions that catastrophic. Maurice Bishop arrested. This was a subjective taken by a handful of individuals in the leadership of the NJM without the legitimacy or approval of the rank and file of the party, let the government, organizations, or the masses.
The government was never consulted in this decision. The party was not the government. But in the reality of Grenada, the party was paramount to the government.
Who made the decision to arrest Bishop?
A. The decision was made by the leaders of the Ministry of the Interior with the approval of members of the Central Committee. Leaders of the Ministry of the Interior were also members of the Central Committee. So, basically, we are talking about the same individuals.
Returning to the subject of Marxists traditionally look to is the Russian model, that is, the soviets established in Soviet Union in 1917. The Bolshevik Party was the vanguard party, but the power of the revolution vested in the soviets.
The soviets were qualitatively larger
Russian society. The unions and the Bolshevik Party were relatively small. The Bolsheviks political majority leading bodies of the soviets because they had won this majority.
But the soviets were multi-party open discussion and making. And they - not the Bolshevik
- were the government, the revolution proceeded under Stalin, the power of the soviets disintegrated, and the party took on a bureaucratic in the radical movement don't believe that working people -particularly underdeveloped countries - can rule society through their own mass organizations. They say that the people aren't yet ready to rule and that they don't have the necessary education. In my view, this kind of thinking is extremely paternalistic...
A. It is paternalistic and arrogant, and borders on racism.
The Russian workers and peasants did not read, but they learned based on their class interests.
In Grenada, was there discussion within the NJM on whether or not the people should rule through their own institutions - like the Russian workers and peasants ruled through the early soviets?
were basically schools of thought on this question. One of them, favored rule by the people as as it was possible. But it understood that rule by the people could not be separated from mass education - political mass education -formal mass education. I share that
Another school of thought believed that the masses could attain the necessary political consciousness to rule, but that this would take a long time, and it could not happen without a party to guide this process. This school of thought believed that the party would have to be paramount in this process for quite some time.
Bernard Coard (DR) Bernard Coard was in that school of thought.
What happened in Grenada in October 1983 is that Coard's current degenerated to the point where it confused the vanguard role of the party with the revolution itself. A lot of Coard's supporters began to substitute the party for the revolution.
Once you do that, once you think that the party is superior to the revolution, you will almost inevitably develop an anti-people arrogance.
The Coard current considered the people to be backward and Bishop to be backward. The only way to that backwardness, analysis, was to get Bishop out of the
The ultimate manifestation of that arrogance was the massacre of and his supporters at Fort Rupert in October 1983.
Q. It seems, therefore, that Bishop's arrest was the decisive turning point in the revolution.
A. Absolutely.
Q. Unison Whiteman led a demonstration to free Bishop from his house arrest. Ten thousand people led by Bishop, proceeded to Fort Rupert. Wasn't the power of the revolution re-vested, so to speak, in the people at that point?
A. Exactly. The most important mass movement in the modern history of the Grenadian people took place on October 19, 1983, when the people, on their own initiative, took things into their own hands. Through their determination to win back the power that had been stolen from them
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International Viewpoint 23 February 1987
- that had been usurped by Coard
. At that moment there was a confrontation between the will of a revolutionary people who supported the programs of the government, and the party, which was out of step, to
A. Correct. At that moment the party became the number one contradiction in the eyes of the people. And objectively they were correct.
Q. Coard then called out the troops, and the people became subordinate to the power of the army. At that point the revolution was defeated. The Reagan administration had an open door to walk in...
A. Exactly.
Q. Concerning the question of arms. To what extent did the Grenadian people, outside of the army, have arms? To what extent were the militias armed? What was the view of the NJM concerning the daily arming of people in their workplaces, the
A. The people were not armed independent of the army. The people their arms from armories under the control of the army. And the people received the arms only in periods of high mobilization and periods of crisis.
Again, looking at things in hindsight, I would say that this probably was an error. At any rate, the NJM felt at the time that it was somewhat dangerous to make arms freely available - even to the militia, which was without question fully in support of the revolutionary process.
The fear, I suppose, rested on the possibility that imperialism would counter-revolutionary ments who would have access to arms in an open situation like that. counter-revolutionary activity of a violent nature.
Following the US invasion of Grenada, The New York Times reported on a hotel owner in Grenada spoke joyfully about how he, with his two-way radio, had contacted the American warships and directed them to fire against strategic targets on the island.
I had this vision of a man who was relatively rich and powerful directly collaborating with the United States.
What was the attitude of the NJM, under Bishop, towards those merchants, hotel owners, and other wealthy sectors? How did you view the process of social transformation -of class transformation? How did you view your relationship to the 24 hotel owners and the merchant class in the course of the revolution?
From the very outset we made it clear to the merchant class, to the hoteliers, to the propertied bourgeoisie as a whole, that this revolution was made for the poor and working people of the country.
that this revolution placed, as its most central priority, the concerns and the interests of the majority of the population, i.e., the masses. We made it very clear to them that this revolution was not going to allow them to exercise political power for the benefit of their narrow class interests. And that is what happened during the
However, the revolution also under. stood that there had to be a period of time during which to transfer the economic power of this propertied minority to the majority. But this is not something that can be done effectively overnight. Maurice said that the economic transformations are not like Nescafe - instant coffee.
The first step was to put political power into the hands of the dispossessed and powerless masses of the country. The next step was to prepare the masses to accept the transference of economic power. That process would have taken a little longer.
It is necessary to encourage the private sector because they have the entrepreneurial and managerial skills to invest their capital in development projects. But if they do not respond positively to that encouragement, then it is possible to explain to the masses that these private producers cannot be considered patriotic elements. At that point, it is permissible to take whatever measures are considerered necessary to protect the interest
Q. Concerning the interventionist policy of the US government. Following the latest US elections the proSandinista press in Nicaragua extenParty representatives, who stated that there would be no fundamental change in US policy toward Central America even though the Democrats gained control of the senate
The Nicaraguan FSLN seems to be moving to the conclusion that replacing Republicans with Democrats in the elections will not lessen the US war against the Nicaraguan revolution. They seem to be more interested in seeing the development of an inanti-intervention movement everywhere in the world - and in the United States in particuknow that the leadership of th revolution watched th internal political scene closely and expressed the view that Carter would be preferable to Reagan, and the Democrats were preferable to the Republicans. place in the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement concerning the Democratic and Republican parties, and more generally concerning the process of social change in the United States?
don't labor under the illusion that if a Democratic president is elected, or a Democratic Congress is elected, this would necesresult in a qualitative change in the policy of US intervention in
We have looked at the bipartisan support for the Grenadian invasion very closely. We are alarmed at the continued bipartisan support for ag against Nicaragua, for support to El Salvador.
course, that more and would eventually contribute to a lessening of Democratic support for such policies, but we are not terribly optimistic that this will happen in
We recognize that the policy of intervention is a policy of imperialism and we recognize that both the Demo. cratic and Republican Parties are imperialist parties.
We do not forget that when our revolution came to power in 1979 - the Carter administration was in power at the time - the Pentagon was authorized to draw up a plan for a naval blockade of Grenada within weeks after the triumph of the revolution. That plan was deferred, if not aborted, by the Carter government after it was clear that we enjoyed international recognition from the United States' closest NATO allies. But an invasion of Grenada was contemplated during the Carter years.
We do not forget that it was under the liberal administration of John F. Kennedy that the Bay of Pigs invasion was conducted. We do not forget that it was under the so-called liberal administration of Johnson that the Dominican Republic was invaded in
We would hope that the present Democratic majority in the Senate and the House would put a little brake on the headlong rush towards intervention in Central America. But we have no illusions that replacing Mr Reagan with a Democratic president is going to, overnight, put an end to what is essentially a policy of an imperialist form of government.
This form of government, unforwill continue to exist in the United States until the American people, by their united resolve, are able to do something about that.