New debates inside
Sandinista front
NICARAGUA
Indeed, on the eve of the elections, pressure was coming from some rank-and-file militants for the calling of the first congress of the FSLN. In fact, it was only after the disarming of the Contras on June 10 that the Sandinista Assembly, on a proposal from the National Leadership, decided to call the congress for February 1991. The Assembly adopted an impor
THIS summer, a few months after the defeat of the Sandinistas
(FSLN) in the Nicaraguan elections in February, the victorious
UNO government's attacks on the gains of the revolution ran up against a massive popular movement. The strait-jacket into which the civil war had pressed Nicaraguan political life has burst asunder. With the disarmament of most of the Contra rebels and UNO's aggressive policies, class struggle is back on the agenda.
ERIC TOUSSAINT
HE confrontation was not sought
T by the FLN: it was provoked by the bourgeoisie which, despite between so-called differences moderates (Chamorro, Lacayo, Cesaret)
and the hardliners around Vice-President
Godoy, is united in its desire to reverse the changes wrought during the period when the FSLN was in power. Once the wave of protests had started, the Sandinista leadership, under pressure from below, became more and more involved in the struggle.
At the same time, despite the activism on the ground of a part of its social base, sharp debates continue inside the FSLN and make it unable to arrive at a strategy for dealing with the new situation and seeing the way to a return to power. The Sandinistas' international isolation — the product of the counter-revolutionary policies of both international social democracy and the Soviet bureaucracy - counterbalances the revival of popular struggles.
Their situation is not helped by the fact that the FSLN's leadership continues to adhere to a line close to that of 1988.
Until the elections the main issue was the struggle against the military aggression. The FSLN believed that, in order to fight this aggression, it was necessary to find a modus vivendi with all sectors of the bourgeoisie ready to keep production
This meant that the FSLN did going.
everything possible to avoid strikes that might inconvenience "patriotic entrepreneurs". In June 1988, in the same perspective, the
Sandinistas decided to apply
IMF-style austerity policies, which meant increasing hardship for the social base of the revolution. The working class, including industrial workers, agricultural workers, teachers, health workers and public sector white-collar workers, as well as the small owners, were expected to tighten their belts in the interests of national unity, while the bourgeoisie continued to organize the flight of capital.
This policy aroused a malaise in the
Sandinista ranks, even if there was no open crisis - since most of the militants took into account the war situation, the US economic blockade, the absence of significant lines of credit from Europe and the reduction in aid from the "socialist camp".
### Ostentatious leaders
Presented
The discontent then turned against the ostentation of a number of Sandinista cadres in the state apparatus, the vertical functioning of the Front and its relations with the mass organizations, the sharply increasing wage differentials, and the absence of an adequate social cushion against the effects of the economic austerity measures at a time when the people were continuing to give their quota in blood to defend the revolution.
According to Orlando Nuñez (Barricada, June 14, 1990): "The people were paying in human lives, while the negotiators contributed signatures to agreements - with no end in sight."
tant document to launch the debate which takes up, to use the Front's own terms: "in a very detailed way the mistakes in the political work of the FSLN, its style of leadership, the weakening of its links with the masses, the question mark over the exemplary character of certain Sandinista cadres and militants, and the opening of a critical discussion inside the FSLN"(Barricada, June 26, 1990).
This text!, besides a long self-critical balance-sheet of the electoral defeat, addresses the question of the period ahead. There is no mention of a social pact, although this is not explicitly ruled out either. The objective set out in the text is "to reject all attempts to call into question the conquests of the revolution - the agricultural reform, the nationalization of natural resources, of the national bank and of foreign trade, the active role of the state in production and development? and the participation of workers in the running of the economy."
The question of the recapture of governmental power is posed cautiously, in a perspective that is not purely electoral: "The FSLN aims to regain power by the electoral road in 1996. It must also consider different options, depending on circumstances, for assuming the government before that date, within a constitutional framework." On the forms of 1. The text was published in Barricada, June 26, 27, 28 and 29, 1990. 2. The state sector in industrial production, agriculture and distribution known as the Space of People's Property (APP) is not mentioned as such, suggesting that some sectors of the APP are negotiable, probably excepting agriculture.
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NO
International Viewpoint #191 • October 1, 1990
NICARAGUA struggle: "Our main form of struggle will be the direct action of the masses and the politico-ideological struggle....The FLN dence.. Each body, cadre must take their place in the front-rank of the popular struggles."
This text, however, is only the start of the debate. One of the main discussions is for a social pact between the FSLN and the modernizing sectors of the bourgeoisie. After the UNO victory, the FLN negotiated with the victors an agreement on the transfer of power. It had a number of strong cards in its hands. It was the largest party in parliament, with 40% of the vote, and it controls the Sandinista police forces. The negotiations resulted in a curious situation - the constitutional army remains under the FLN's control at the level of the command and the officer corps. The UNO president on the other hand is the supreme commander, but does not have any absolutely guarantee that her
Hopes for deal with Chamorro
At the time a discussion developed in the Front on the possibility of arriving at a national accord in which UNO would agree not to call into question the main revolutionary measures, and in exchange for this, the FSLN would agree not to destabilize the government. There were big expectations about such an agreement being reached in some quarters in the FSLN, including in its leadership.
Then one of the nine members of the national leadership, Victor Tirado Lopez, in an interview published on March 20, 1990, announced the end of the cycle of anti-imperialist revolutions in Latin America, and stated his retrospective belief that the FSLN had been wrong to push ahead with over-rapid social transformations. This declaration shocked the Sandinista base. Some of the leaders changed their line of fire: "The setbacks suffered by socialism for structural reasons in Eastern Europe, and also our experiences, do not at all mean the end of the perspective of anti-imperialist struggle" (Bayardo Arce in Barricada March 29, 1990).
Nonetheless some of the Sandinista leadership have remained firm on the need to seek a national agreement with the bourgeoisie and with the moderate tendency in UNO, which includes the president and the executive in the National Assembly. Martinez Cuenca, exSandinista minister and one of those responsible for the monetarist-style plan of 1988/89 wrote in Barricada on June 16, 1990: "It is clear that for the so-called modernizing bourgeoisie, the rout of the [armed] counter-revolution allows it to 18 govern, but it is also true that this rout offers advantages to the people, allowing it to work for the improvement of its living conditions; these modernizing sectors continue to understand the need to avoid revanchism against what the people of the town and countryside have managed to construct over the past ten years."
Cuenca attributes to the modernizing sectors a power over the bourgeoisie as a whole that it does not have. He argues from the assumption that the freedom to. organize and struggle are conquered once for all time, and believes that alternations of power can take place in the way they
Western bourgeois democracy. Similar statements have been made by other Sandinista leaders such as Rafael Solis, Carlos Tunnerman and Joaquín Cuadra. The latter has envisaged the conclusion of a social pact of the Spanish Francoist dictatorship to the constitutional monarchy was carried out nonviolently (Barricada, August 3-4,1990).
The impact of defeat
These positions are criticized in the columns of the press and in the Sandinista assemblies. One of the strongest critiques is provided by Pedro Rodriguez: "history teaches us above all with respect to the spectacular events that we have lived through, that when the revolutionary movement suffers a defeat that seems decisive, and when capitalism seems to be in an ascendant phase, it is normal for voices to be raised in the revolutionary camp saying that it is senseless to attempt to jump over stages and launch into premature social revolutions. Explaining that it is necessary to leave the field open to capitalism to develop, these same comrades think that in the present conditions, revolutionaries can do nothing more than fight for the "least wild" capitalism....But can capitalism develop in a "non-wild" form in Nicaragua? Is a social democratic capitalism possible here?
"Yes. On condition that the new regime obtains each year a sum of around $800m to $1,200m. Otherwise it will be obliged to accept savage recipes along the lines suggested by the COSEP (employers' organization) plan, a perfect example of backward, primitive, troglodyte, even 'wild' capitalism.
"In the absence of foreign subsidies, capitalism in our country — and this is not a question of bad faith or cruelty, but of necessity — must develop in a wild fashion. Such is primitive accumulation.
"Some of our comrades who — with the best intentions in the world - dream of a social democratic capitalism, are only reinforcing the illusions and demobilization of the masses, instead of preparing for the terocious struggles that are approaching." (Neuvo Diario, May 2324, 1990).
For his part, Orlando Nuñez, a member of the Sandinista Assembly, expressed his opposition to the search for a social pact: "All this talk of concrete proposals for working together means nothing but playing the bourgeoisie's game and aiding its counter-revolutionary project."(Barricada, July 14,1990) He makes it clear in what context "working together" could be justifiable: "These agreements [the Sapoa accords and the handover agreement] were signed in the context of the military and economic pressure of American imperialism. For the Sandinistas and the revojustified by the need to defend the revolution in the face of a force that had vastly superior means from any point of view. For the gringos and the national bourgeoisie and its parties this "working together" was all about getting concessions to weaken the revolution."
Alliance of popular forces
As an alternative to the line of social pacts, Nuñez advances the notion of an alliance of the popular classes. Against the "reactionary and counterrevolutionary alliance between the modern and neo-liberal sectors of big capital and the Catholic Church" it is necessary to construct "a revolutionary alliance between the working class and urban elements of the Sandinista forces on the one hand, and the peasants, especially those peasants who took part in the Contra "National Resistance'
In his reply to Nuñez, Martinez Cuenca described the former's arguments as "demagogic" and writes that "his arguments are more like something from May 1968 than an attempt to address the dramatic and difficult process of constructing democracy in Nicaragua in the 1980s and 1990s."(Barricada, June 16, 1990). Nonetheless, it is clear that it is Nuñez who expressed the sentiments of the majority engaged in a fierce struggle with the government. This is certainly the impression that was given by the Sandinista Assembly of June 16-17, 1990
Beside the ideological impossibility of reaching a social pact, or at least one that does not involve capitulation on the Sandinista side, is becoming ever more clear in the class struggle on the ground. The failure of the government to carry out the agreements that were reached after the strikes of May and July 1990 are a clear sign that the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie has set itself the aim of turning the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas into a rout of the revolution. It intends to fundamentally change the balance of forc es between capital and labour, by inflicting a social defeat on the working class and its allies. * 3. The position of the Fourth International on these matters can be found in the resolution of its International Executive Committee, published in International Marxist Review, Summer 1990.
LApres
Meech ? MORE THAN 200,000 people came into the streets of Montreal on June 24, the Quebec national holiday. Counting the display in the evening, more than 500,000 people were involved during the day. Opinion polls had already indicated before the collapse the same weekend of the
Lake Meech accords, which had attempted to reintegrate Quebec into the
Canadian federation, that support for
Quebec's sovereignty stood at between
60% and 70%.
RONALD CAMERON
HE road to and from Lake
T
Meech started after 1982, when, at the time of Trudeau's Liberal government, the Canadian state
"repatriated" its constitution from the hands of the British Queen. This was Trudeau's answer to the 1980 sovereignty reterendum of the then Prime Minister of
Quebec, Rene Levesque. The provincial
Parti Quebecois government headed by
Levesque refused to endorse Trudeau's unilateral reform. Since then Quebec has technically not been part of Canada.
The new attempt to reach a constitutional agreement was put forward at Lake
Meech in 1987 by the Prime Ministers of the 10 provinces on the initiative of Trudeau's
Conservative successor,
Brian
Mulroney. Despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of worker and national organizations in Quebec, this accord became the rallying point of the autonomist struggle, which the Liberal
Prime Minister of Quebec, Robert Bourassa, wanted to win, evidently in alliance with Mulroney.
In fact, these accords gave Quebec no more areas of control than had been recog nized in similar agreements over the previous ten years. The crowning point of the accord was a clause formally recognizing
Quebec as a distinct society;
careful the agreement was however to avoid granting selfthe right to determination.
Some left
Canadian nationalist currents, while evading the issue of the distinct society clause, the rights of emphasized
Amerindians and women, individuals in order to reject these accords and ride out the wave of chauvinism with regard to Quebec in Canada's anglophone population.
Some more pragmatic political personalities, of the school of ex-PM Trudeau, envisaged the need for an increased centralization of the federal state expense of Quebec national rights.
A constitutional reform, such as Lake
Meech, demands a consensus by the legislative assemblies of the ten provinces and the federal parliament, three years after the signing of the accords. This period ended on June 23, 1990, the eve of
Quebec's national day.
Surreal atmosphere at Lake
Meech
Intensive week-long secret negotiations took place in what even the Prime Ministers described as a surreal atmosphere.
These worthies were already on the verge of walking out when an Amerindian provincial deputy from Manitoba made use of procedures to prevent the legislative assembly in that province from ratifying the accords. The house of cards collapsed.
The failure at Lake Meech marks the start of a profound crisis of the Canadian state. This crisis of unity, of legitimacy and federalism, is expressed first of all through the inability to carry out constitutional reforms, as has been shown by the Oka crisis with the Amerindians (see accompanying article). The federal government cannot give concessions to national or territorial demands, since any concession tends to place its own legitimacy in question. Canadian politics will be bogged down in regional rivalries aggravated by economic slowdown.
The crisis also finds expression in defections from the federal Liberal and Conservative parties. Brian Mulroney has lost his main lieutenant in Quebec, Lucien Bouchard, who has formed a Quebecois bloc of defector deputies in the federal parliament.
This bloc got trade unionist Gilles Duceppe elected in a by-election in Montreal with 66% of the vote, leaving the federal parties to share out 30%. Mulroney's candidate got 3%. The aim of the Bloc Quebecois is to defend Quebec's interests in Ottawa, despite Bouchard and co's stated support for Mulroney's overall policies.
The rejection of the Lake Meech accords came as a shock in Quebec. The post-referendum trauma after 1980, the return to private life and scepticism about collective action are all things of the past. Quebecois sovereignty is possible again. But there is a battle underway to define the precise road to follow to realize aspirations for self-determination.
Basically, the bourgeois political forces in Quebec are trying to create a relation of forces to "negotiate" sovereignty with the federation, whether this is a part of, or separate from, Canada or free exchange with the US.
Robert Bourassa's project is to find the weakest possible variant of this perspecway that will not involve a break with the 19 way that will not involve a break with the
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