At the same time, however, Washington has found over the last few years that, as far as regional conflicts such as Afghanistan and Angola are concerned, the relationship of forces at the negotiating table has moved in its favour. It has thus decided to establish a series of "linkages" to reinforce its position in strategic negotiations. Given the crisis of Reagan's policy in Central America, this means trying to put indirect pressure on Cuba and Nicaragua, explaining that the regional crisis is the product of Soviet "subversion". Independence of the Central
American revolutions
Gorbachev's visit to Cuba was the occasion for a propaganda campaign that had an enormous resonance, with the sole objective of reducing Gorbachev's power of attraction in Latin America. Fidel Castro profited from the campaign, because it allowed him to channel all the internal tensions engendered by the visit - the hopes invested in perestroika by sections of the population and of the cadres unhappy with the type of solutions to the economic and social crisis contained in the rectification campaign issues of independence and the indigenous character of the revolution. Castro's line was that Washington must understand that negotiations on matters Cuba must be held directly with Havana and nobody else. The restatement of this principle was especially important after the negotiations over Angola and Namibia. At the same time it represented a hope that it might be possible to profit from the international situation to revive diplomatic dialogue between Cuba and the US.
Central America is not a priority for the Soviet Union; It is a regional conflict. Over and over again, Moscow has urged on the FSLN and FMLN a "moderation" incompatible with their revolutionary project, going so far as to suggest the Afghan solution — marked by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan calling for a government of national reconciliation with the Mujahideen - as a model. But the independence of the Central American revolutions conditions the Soviets' own capacity to make concessions. Furthermore, given the lack of encouragement from the US, Moscow is continuing to take initiatives at the level of strategic negotiations. Moscow might find it more useful to make a unilateral expressing support for Ortega's declaration that Nicaragua, once the contra danmaintain its present defence capacities and might even reduce them. Soviet aid could then be doled out commensurately.
The US demands have a fundamentally ideological character expressed by the formula: "Stop US military aid to the contras and Soviet military aid to the FSLN". The FSLN is thus presented as one of the belligerents in a civil war, rather than the government of the country, which is clearly unacceptable
In this situation, international solidarity takes on a new importance for thwarting administration's
CENTRAL AMERICA • NICARAGUA
Sandinista leaders on the working people. Practice has shown us that exists the close inter-relationship between democracy and the working people.
This is the reason for the existence of the Nicaraguan crisis mass organizations, which are the expression of democracy at a high level. It is strange that these forms of democracy, such as the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS), the workers' organizations,
AT THE END of January the Nicaraguan government announced a drastic austerity programme in response to a situation of economic collapse, including an inflation rate of
20,000% in 1988, resulting in a drop in the purchasing power of the working-class of some 85%. The state budget was to be slashed by an estimated 44%, 35,000 military and civilian state employees were to be dismissed, credit was be tightened and subsidies abolished or reduced.
At the same time appeals were made to the Nicaraguan private sector for a new spirit of cooperation and the agriculture minister, Jaime Wheelock, explained that land expropriations were to cease. All this formed the backdrop to Daniel Ortega's visit to Europe in April in search of desperately needed economic and diplomatic assistance.
Here we publish extracts giving the views of four leading
Sandinistas on these developments.
DOCUMENTS
"It is necessary to reinforce pluralism"
TOMAS BORGE, Nicaraguan
Minister of the Interior, explains here the recent economic measures adopted by the Sandinista government.
HE IMPOSSIBILITY of increas
T ing spending in health and education is objective. Unlike what happens in other social systems, where the absence of social programs is bound up with the nature of these systems, in our case this is against our will....
As for the use of market mechanisms, for a long time the theory of scientific socialism has gone beyond the idea of associating market relations only with capitalism, as if they were totally contrary to socialism. We could go back to Lenin's
NEP and other historical instances to show that market and monetary relations are objective conditions. The problem is to use them in a conscious way and prevent them from operating in a blind way....
The danger of a distortion of values exists. But the National Leadership was able to discern this threat in time. I think that if there is a time when we should be more demanding toward our forces, it is now. Thus, we have to demand a commitment to principles, to austerity, to honesty. If there is a time when we have to confront bureaucracy, egoism and other human deformation, it is now. And only revolution, and in the present case the Sandinista Front, can succeed. The National Leadership has a firm intention to exercise strict vigilance over the personal conduct and ideological purity of members of our organization. "Economic collaboration is an objective necessity"
From the outset, we expressed our intention to build a mixed economy and political pluralism. The war, which is about to end, made it very difficult to put these aims into practice, but it did not put in question their validity. Now the military defeat of the counter-revolution makes it possible once again to stress these programmatic conceptions in conditions that are still difficult but new. Economic collaboration is an objective necessity of the post-war period. But it is also necessary to reinforce pluralism for the same reasons, because it would not be consistent to look toward implementing only one of these two points....
We think that the fundamental element of democracy is the people, but above all youth organizations and so on are being put in question as para-state organizations. Democratization should open up new spaces
However, if people think a moment about this, they will conclude that these organizations are the product of authentic democratic action that developed in the struggle against the dictatorship and in the struggle against a backward dependent system. This is very important for the National Leadership, because the democratization efforts are intended to recompose the civil society and its organizations.
Over all these years, in addition to the 1984 elections, the people have exercised democracy and defended the motherland and its sovereignty. The democratization should open up new spaces for initiative by the revolution and the people's organizations. *
[Barricada, March 7-8, 1989]
Restoration or democratic socialism?
ORLANDO NUNEZ is a
Sandinista cadre and an advisor to the FSLN leadership on agrarian reform.
N THE BASIS of the economic reforms in the socialist world and the collaboration policy in Nicaragua, people have begun talking about an alternative between restoring the previous capitalist system and the transformation possibilities of the socialist model applied in the twentieth century. We think that this alternative is part of the struggle and, facing the threats of restoration, we are inclined to rely on the possibilities of a democratic socialism that would select out the best of state socialism and the need for socialism based on the civil society.
The final stage of capitas im and the 19
first stage of capitalism cross in the state. July 10, 1989 • #167 International Viewpoint
NICARAGUA
Capitalism ages as state capitalism, while socialism is born as state socialism....
The socialist-oriented revolutions in our countries have entailed major state intervention to achieve political, social and economic changes whose urgency appeared in the course of the transformation process. Over time, we have realized that history has changed more rapidly than the economic conditions, and that a dysfunction has occurred between these two processes....
Problems faced by the revolution
Thus, the revolutions in power have had to do violence to their own societies in two respects:
a) State intervention in the economy (nationalization, planning and bureaucratization). The revolutions have done this precisely to transform the social relationships of production from above, given the limitations of the material conditions in which they developed.
b) The intervention of the party in the class (a single hierarchical party, authoritarianism and exclusivity) in order to remedy the previously existing social injustice (exploitation and the domination of one class over another). Often the party has had to serve as the agent for carrying out the tasks of popular classes with great
The points noted before lead us to recognize the existence of two rules, or laws, of socialist-oriented revolutions in underdeveloped countries.
a) If the transformation of the social relationships (political changes) goes faster than the development of the productive forces (material conditions), this gap will ultimately wipe out the changes and set back development.
b) If the degree of intervention by the state in the economy and by the party in the class is greater than the state's management capacity and popular participation, the gap arising will ultimately limit social and popular supervision of the state and set back democratization of the socie-
All this has been necessary, and we believe that where socialist-oriented revolutions occur in a context of underdevelopment, we will see similar processes. However, it is also a good thing to became familiar with the limitations and contradictions of the first stage of such revolutions, and it is still better if we know how to surmount these conditions without abandoning the revolutionary and socialist road, as we are experiencing through the processes of rectification, perestroika-glasnost, reforms and so on.
Once socialist-oriented revolutions have completed their first stage, excluding the bourgeoisie from power and gaining economic and political hegemony for 20 the people's state, they. must prepare themselves to open the way for the indeInternational Viewpoint #167 • July 10, 1989 pendence of the civil society from the state and for general self-management of the popular classes in all arenas of cultural, economic and social life. In other words, this means moving on from state socialism to a community which would not eliminate the role of the state but would regulate it so that the adjustment processes would not lead us to the restoration of the free-enterprise economy and bourgeois democracy....
Sandinism, as a conception and as the practice of a mixed economy, of political pluralism and non-alignment makes possible a transition from one model of socialism to the other:
a) Radical transformations in the state and economy have created the objective conditions making possible revolutionary b) The FSLN's nature as a vanguard party, as a front of revolutionary unity and national unity.
c) The process of autonomy for the Atlantic Coast communities.
d) The massive participation of the people in defense.
e) The process of liberating women in the countryside and in the cities.
f) The broad and majority character, from the standpoint of production, of our tradespeople, and so on).
g) The immense experience of popular participation of all social, political, economic and cultural sectors of Nicaraguan peasant cooperatives, unions, Sandinista Defense Committees, health-service brigades, people's education collectives, associations, councils of all sorts, self-defense cooperatives, producers' associations, peasants stores, women's stores, popular cultural centers, base groups of all religions, trading cooperatives, community movements, and so on.
A continuous campaign of education
Guaranteeing the transition involves the following: Reinforcing the class consciousness of the Nicaraguan people against the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Consolidating the previous transformations. Guaranteeing that the decentralizastate coincides with the recovery by the civil society (the organized people) of all those state functions that can be taken over by community blocs, and the organization and advancement of all possible forms of association and cooperation among all the social, economic and cultural sectors of society. The launching of a continuous campaign of education, propaganda and dissemination of the new values of solidarity and cooperation against the old values of competirelations. The advancing of Sandinism as a socialist alternative to the crisis of capitalism, and of state socialism....
This can be one of the ways of clearing away the positions of all those who, basing themselves on perestroika and on the processes of adjustment and stabilization underway, have raised the flags of scepticism, defeatism, demoralization, passive dissidence or petty-bourgeois reformism or the spirit of restoration and counterreform.
We have to fight to show why things are the way they are, that it is capitalism that is in crisis and that state (authoritarian, developmentalist and bureaucratic) socialism is not enough to confront this crisis, and so we have to complement it by committing ourselves to democratic, decentralized socialism to the fullest extent possible, in which the civil society and the people will regain their independence and adjust it to modern conditions. *
[Barricada, March 31-April 1, 1989.1
Perestroika and the third world COMMANDANT Victor Tirado, a member of the National Leadership of the FSLN, commented on perestroika and its impact on the third world in an interview with the Agencia Nueva Nicaragua (ANN). The following are some excerpts.
P ERESTROIKA is a revolution
in the USSR. It is shaking up and transforming intergovernmental relations....The Soviet government has excluded war, the arms race and reinforcing its military capacity as a means of guaranteeing its security. Today, it wants to base its security on its economic power, on its growth, and not only its external security but also its inter-
The battle between the socialist system and the capitalist camp has been lost temporarily by socialism. In other socialism has not been able to defeat developed capitalism in the economic arena. The Soviet leaders have realized that investing so much in the military sphere retarded economic development, as did excessive centralization and forced collectivization of agriculture. They now want to devote the resources formally channelled into the military apparatus to strengthening the country's economy.
If tension is reduced in the world and in the regions, the military aid the USSR
offers to some third world countries will be transformed into economic cooperation, and clearly this change will be positive. In such a context of détente, which the USSR has fostered by starting to disarm unilaterally, the regional conflicts are in the process of being settled....
We are entering a period when revolutionary changes can emerge in a climate of peace, of civic struggles. So, strategies and tactics have to be adapted to these new realities, without losing sight of the essential goal, the perspective of socialism, of a pluralist society, without forced collectivization, a decentralized ism. We do not seek to achieve this before the society has reached a high level of development. It has been proven that you can't jump over historical stages without paying a price for it, that you cannot establish socialism by decree. We must never lose sight of the need to move forward in a way favorable to the majority of the peo-
It is clear that the USSR is prepared to maintain its aid to the underdeveloped countries "in accordance with its possibilities." It does not have the means for giving countries such as ours all the aid that they need. Its help in most cases is limited. Another element has to be taken into consideration. The USSR has never, or almost never, gotten back the aid that it has given to third world countries, and what is more this aid has seldom been followed by economic successes in the coun-
"Everything has to be subjected to criticism"
According to the Soviet leaders' new conception, aid has to be matched by economic gains in the countries that get it. In accordance with the ideas of efficiency and modernization, the Soviets consider that if they themselves aim to increase their production and productivity, the countries that benefit from their aid should do as much. In other words, aid has to be profitable.
What is going to be cut, and in some cases eliminated, is military aid. This new reality has been created by agreement with the US, Washington's pressures and the interests of the USSR itself, along with its allies, in disarmament.
In this new outlook, the revolutionary movement and the Marxist-Leninist parties have to make a balance sheet of their experiences, of their errors, and of their successes over these last 70 years.
However, it is up primarily to the Soviet Communists to undertake this work, because they are the ones who have led or inspired the activity of the Communist parties and many anti-imperialist movements. Everything has to be subjected to criticism — ingrained ideas, hallowed traditions, Marxism, Leninism, and as has been done, Stalinism, which little by little has been extirpated. Marxism is critical, nothing stops it; that is why it is revolu-
Often from the outside, Nicaragua is described as a strong, or even excessively strong state. This has been forced on us; we did not want it. When an underdeveloped country makes a revolution, it has to build a state stronger than economic base on which it rests in order to defend the strategic interests of the working people.
In our case, the problem was to assure the future of the Sandinista project as it was outlined in 1968, and as Sandino conceived it. This can require building a state virtually standing above the civil society, as strong as had to be built here or in Cuba, in Angola and in other revolutionary countries of the third world. It is necessary to build a military force to meet aggression. This sort of state can last for years. It is inherently linked to the foreign pressures and aggressions to which the revolution is exposed.
In order for the power of the state to be reduced, a climate of peace is necessary. It is necessary to be very conscious of the stages that have to be completed in order Crisis in Latin America EXCERPTS from the speech given at the 1989 Hatofer economic fair by the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega.
N ICARAGUA's place in Latin
American cannot be forgotten. Its situation is rather difficult because of the wrong economic policy that has been conducted up until now, and which is rocking all the countries on the continent. I am referring, obviously, to the political choices made by the industrialized and developed countries of the North, but also to the responsiwho have run this continent's economy for long years, that is, the Latin American capitalists. In Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and all of Latin America, they have achieved considerable development at the price of foreign debt....
Those responsible for the present situation are not the working people, the workers and the peasants, but the businessmen and the capitalists. And what has been the result of this policy? Has it been positive? No, it has not, and I am not the only one to say this. In Venezuela, the reins of govmonths by President Carlos Andres Per-
NICARAGUA to be able to restore the role of the civil society, for it to be able to develop in harmony with the economic and social structure....
There are already theoretical analyses on this subject. A capitalist state is organized to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie, and for this purpose it does not have to interfere in the running of businesses. You can say, for example, that Reagan's replacement by Bush is not going to change anything there; the organization of the state is going to remain overall the same....
This assumes that the presidency is going to continue to defend the same class interests. It has an instrument, the army, to defend its interests abroad and not domestically. The state can exist without controlling a single economic sector. It is maintained to look after national security and foreign interests...On the other hand, a socialist state, a state of the new type that works for national liberation, cannot share this conception if it wants to achieve its project. Experience shows that it has to keep an eye on everything.... *
[Managua, April 2, 1989] ez, who enjoys very broad national and international support, both from countries that agree with the Venezuelan economic model and revolutionary countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua. In the space of a few days, when he tried to apply a body of economic measures a million times less severe than those implemented in our country, he faced a social explosion.
I called Carlos Andres to offer my solidarity, that of the Nicaraguan people and of the Sandinista Front, but also to condemn the domestic and foreign policies that lead to such situations. Carlos Andres answered that the problem was in fact a social explosion touched off by the economic situation and not by an organized revolutionary force. It was, as he himself said, the reaction of the poor against the rich, the oppressed against the oppressors.
The malaise provoked by capitalism in Latin America
We cannot deny the reality that shows that the capitalists who hold economic power in Latin America have not been able to offer an answer to the economic problems of the Latin American countries. This has provoked a malaise that has finally been expressed in a violent and tragic explosion with hundreds of dead, as in Venezuela....
Consequently the Nicaraguan problem cannot be solved by the capitalists. If we gave the economic leadership of the country back to the capitalists, we would be obliged to make a revolution again. But we have already gone through that experience. *
[Barricada, March 1, 1989) 21