The Sandinista revolution and mass democracy
The Reagan administration is redoubling its efforts to exaggeration - reflects the imperialists' fear, which throttle the Nicaraguan revolution. It is using every is shared by the ruling bourgeoisies in Latin America
- black propaganda, of the attraction of the Nicaraguan revolution for the boycott, internationally concerted diplomatic pressures, exploited and oppressed masses of the South American and military attacks by the contras. (1) In this de facto Holy Alliance against a people fighting for the in its practice presents a democratic alterr ative for
NICARAGUA.
conceivable means right to decide its own future.
continent. In fact, building socialism.
"the Sandinista people's revolutiom bourgeoisies, regardless of the differences they have, on the international scale, the Nicaragua revolution is offering a hope, are not failing to make their contribution.
The West European bourgeoisies are offering "demoimperialism. For this reason, cratic" credentials to the more presentable representaare trying to strangle this people and its revolution.
tives of the armed counterrevolution, such as Arturo
They are prepared to use any method to portray the regime as "totalitarian.
Cruz, a former member of the Council of Government thing they can militarily and financially to force the for National Reconstruction (JGRN). They are blocking
Sandinista government to take self-defense measures credits vital for the development of the country.
Their aim is then to present these measures as "proof"
For example, the Social Democratic government of the
Spanish state headed by Felipe Gonzales has just that the Sandinistas suspended a 7.1 million-dollar line of credit. (2)
course. In this way, they are trying to create better
Venezuela are not hesitating to put pressure on the Sandinistas by cutting off oil justifying military intervention of larger scope.
It is necessary to highlight the essential features deliveries. What is more, very strong pressure is being
"people's democracy, put on Mexico to endorse the Reagan Plan. In addition, the Inter-American Development Bank, owing to US clarify the simultaneity of the genuine democratic and social transformation of the society in Nicaragua pressure, has frozen a loan of 54.8 million dollars for but also to counter the campaign of lies that is being agricultural projects (Financial Times, April 10, 1985).
obligingly relayed by the media.*
This international conspiracy - and this is no
Charles-Andre UDRY
Among the purveyors of negative propaganda dressed up with the sauce of "anti-totalitarianism," we have to take note of the signers of the appeal published
Le Monde on March 21, 1985. (4)
They claim that they have been compelled to take up this job by their loyalty to
"Western values." They implore the US
Congress to accept Reagan's proposal to turn over 14 million dollars officially to the contras.
This modest contribution, say, would make it possible to
"the future of democracy" and
"the dictatorship of a totalitarian party, the FSLN."
among whom we find former devotees of Mao and Stalin, have the gall, or the toolishness, to call for escalating
US Marines have already intervened four times in the history of Nicaragua, and on was to prop up the power of imperialism subservient to it — "a son of a bitch ...
but our son of a bitch," Franklin D
Roosevelt once avowed with a cynical talking about the first Somoza, the father of the Nicaraguan dictator overthrown in 1979.
mandarins, who serve up glittering generalities in the name of a
"democracy" limited to a self-appointed
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985 conditions, in the elite, ever seen the US intervene in Latin America a single time to overthrow a dictatorship that was oppressing the
What is more, who are these contras who are supposed to "save democracy?" This is how the members of an American Congressional investigating committee assessed them:
"During the testimony to the House
Intelligence, members of the Congress and other sources revealed that official representatives of the CIA and other persons had supported by the United States raped, tortured, and killed civilians, including
The report included data on of civilians, including women and children, who were burned, dis-
Tribune, December 28, 1985.)
Washington Post correspondent R.J. McCartney found himself obliged. after an on-the-spot inquiry, to make the following judgement: "Furthermore, they [the contras] are threatening to alienate practices of pillaging the peasants and
This is the real face of the saviors of democracy that our crusaders against
La hope that threatens the US and its acolytes " What is more, they do every are following a "totalitarian"
United States in particular, for not only to that Reagan Reagan, who in the 1960s called for bombing Vietnam until it
"as flat as a parking lot." You would wonder what kind of "democracy" these people think they are defending when they see the contras and a stepped-up US military effort as guarantees of "freedoms."
Nonetheless, there is one fact that springs immediately to the eye for all "honest human beings," a category that is becoming scarce among the Paris
"In the two first years of the revolution, leaving aside the initial chaos -which was minimal by comparison with the start of other revolutions - there has been no repression, no deaths, nor any attacks in the border areas. There was a general climate of peace, despite the natural ideological struggle set in motion by a process of deepgoing
All the quotations originally in in this article have been retranslated from
On the Nicaraguan elections, see IV. No. Latin American Newsletters, March 29. Pensamiento Propio, Managua, INIES. p.5
For the text of this appeal, see IV. No. 74, April 22, 1985.
Somoza the war that the country,
Sandinistas have lay claim to the when sla ves, say that in to the deepening the politically into through the
10 and realize
1980 governrevolution." (8)
dialectical process the rights literacy, health, led by
Barnave,
Nationalism and
Socialism socialist been inseparable national condition for aspects and a legacy aggression,
People the against fight cal lution is going that the
The are to in material role of the mass represents a by decisive one.
five in this aspects of being the economic,
These among eration
Workers trade-union
Rural and consolidating
(12)
trade-union
Alongside is prethe work all the obstacles and military
(AMNLAE)
for commander
"for
Finally, the
5.
Christian
World the
Men and of the
Entire
Working
Cimadefor
Peace, special by
Information, Paris, November 1984.
6.
Jose Luis Coraggio,
Op. Cit., p.5
*El papel de las fuerzas
7.
Bayardo
Arce, del triunfo," Serie is forging the despues motrices antes
Orientacion
No.
6,
Managua,
Sandinista,
In
1980, p.29
"E1
Carlos
8.
Nunez
Tellez, papel
-de las organizaciones de proceso en er
Sandinista, revolucionario,"
Serie Orientacion for this
No. 3. Managua, 1980.
FSLN,
Barricada, the organ of the
"Comunicado
August
24,
1980.
oficial de enjoy only very la Direccion nacional del FSLN sobre el proceso electoral."
"La
Victor Tirado respuesta
10.
Lopez es la revolution," CST pamphlet, a la
After the
Managua, 1982.
Pensamiento Propio, No.
19,
Managua,
11.
December 1984, p.8.
Vilas, "Democracia popular y
12.
Carlos M.
participacion obrera en revolucion sandinista,"
Estudio Social Centroamericano,
No. 35, 1983, p.103.
13.
interview with Daniel
Nunez, cf the of UNAG, in issue
No.
190 of president language sister public-
Inprecor,
IV's French ation, February 18, 1985.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
Fifty percent of the Nicaraguan population is under 15 year of age (DR)
of self-organization and struggle against the dictatorship (the Civil Defense Committees - CDCs) has extended into the formation of the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS), mass local organizations that carry out numerous administrative tasks in the neighborhoods.
Such activity in the mass organizations, in which the defense of collective rights is reinforcing individual rights, is bringing about a radical break with a history in which the working people were bled and worked like cattle, atomized by repression, and deprived of the most elementary rights. Through participation in these organizations, the people can acquire dignity, and all the more so because the FSLN respects the autonomy of these bodies. They are by no means transmission belts.
"Most of the sharper criticisms of the state and the FSLN," the letter of the Nicaraguan Christian Communities said, "are coming from the Sandinista Youth and the Association of Rural Workers."
Back in 1981, the FSLN leadership pointed out: "The mass organizations ... have sufficient means to combat ossification of these bodies through internal criticism, public criticism, using all the means of communication up to and including mobilization to demand that measures be taken that can assure that their demands are considered." (14)
In line with this, the right to strike, which was suspended when strikes (some of them promoted by unions linked to the American AFL-CIO) coincided with extreme difficulties in economic reconstruction, was reestablished in December 1981 by the Council of State. International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
Such autonomy for the mass organizations means likewise that opposing positions can be defended within them, positions that may be put forward, even in an organized way by a plurality of parties. Moreover, different union confederations can be organized. Some of these confederations are grouped in the Nicaraguan Trade-Union Coordinating Committee (CSN), in which there are quite open debates, and this points toward a possible process of trade-union unification. (15)
In the mass organizations, the FSLN struggles to win political hegemony on the basis of "social pedagogy" on the basis of its practice and its program, the strength of conviction and the human and political quality of those who identify most directly with it.
Some people in the ranks of the Social Democracy claim the game is rigged because the FSLN controls the key levers in the state apparatus and the army. Such criticism indeed comes from people who have a great fund of experience in manipulating bureaucratic trade-union apparatuses, but it ignores one problem. The weight and responsibility that the FSLN carries in the government identify it with all the difficulties the working people have to face.
The Social Democrats know something about the problems of governmental responsibility! In France and in Spain when they have taken over administering an austerity policy they have experienced a grave loss of credibility and had to pay a heavy price on the electoral and trade-union level. But the FSLN, despite all the obstacles and without resorting to repression, has not only maintained its support but reinforced it. This is the best illustration that the Sandinistas hegemony rests on the legitimacy they gained in the struggle against Somoza and imperialism and on their identification with the achievement of dignity, in the broadest sense, by the masses.
Of course, these mass organizations have problems. Carlos Nunez has noted some of the obstacles to their development - lack of cadres; an insufficient cultural and technical level; the difficulties, in an essentially agricultural country, of surmounting narrow special and local interests in order to instill broader and longer term perspectives into the consciousness of the masses; the exertions and sacrifices demanded by reconstruction; the ever present tendencies to bureaucratization and misuse of office in a situation of scarcity of the basic necessities; the disproportion between the immense sacrifices made by the toiling masses (e.g. in the civil war, the effort to increase production, and in the new war of aggression) and the immediate material results, despite all the progress that has been made. (16)
Whatever the gaps between the daily reality and the general conceptions, the FSLN and the levers the working people have for intervening in various 14. Barricada, July 2, 1981. 15. See the speech of Victor Tirado Lopez assembly of construction workers Managua on October 12, 1982. which is in the pamphlet quoted in foot-note 10. 16. Carlos Nunez Tellez, Op. Cit., p. 13.
11
Militia members on guard against contra attacks (DR)
areas of social life offer safeguards against authoritarian tendencies getting out of hand, against a total concentration of power at the top and, with it, an undermining of activity of the masses -the sort of thing that could lead to the kind of catastrophe that happened in Grenada. This was recognized implicitly by Jose Luis Coraggio:
"In this sense and in the face of the possibility of a US invasion, there is no chance that the Grenada tragedy will be repeated in Nicaragua, given the strength and authority that the mass organizations have already won and their interlocking with the revolutionary project." (17)
All historic experience shows that the insurance against the dissolving effects of poverty fostered by an imperialist encirclement policy is to boost the level of consciousness, mobilization, democracy, and direct mass involvement. This insurance, however, is not of the "all risk" kind.
Overlooking the economic, social, and military context in which "people's power" is being built in Nicaragua in the name of an ahistorical, asocial, and non-class conception of democracy means disregarding the consequences 12 of decades of exploitation and oppression imposed by imperialism on a people who have been deprived for centuries of the ability to express themselves.
Moreover, raising such an abstract notion of democracy means proposing as a "model" a form of democracy where the isolated individual, called the "free citizen" is simply the legal reflection of a supposedly "free" and "equal" relationship between the free owners of the means of production and the workers who are "free" to be fired, to have their wages cut, or to compensate for the meager social security benefits available to them by "individual saving for a rainy day."
However, the Nicaraguans have already experienced such a model in substance if not in the proposed political form, under Somoza. And they have said "no thanks!"
The FSLN has hegemony over the revolutionary process, that is, it holds political and moral authority for the bulk of the working people. This ascendency not based monopoly of power by a party, by a single political force. Hegemony here means the opposite of a one-party system, it was won in the course of the struggle against imperialism and the dictatorship.
Over 18 years, and in an accelerated way after 1977-1978, the FSLN was able to represent and give concrete form to the opposition to the Somoza regime. It gradually wrested all real political authority away from the anti-Somoza bourgeoisie, which wanted to keep the same socio-economic system, but without Somoza. To that end, it sought American mediation in order to solve the "crisis" at the least cost, that is, assuring its positions.
Thus, the FSLN was able to create a sort of national "consensus" among the bulk of the people. Once the backbone of the Somoza regime - the National Guard - was destroyed, pursued the democratic and anti-imperialist tasks at a higher level by building up the mass organizations. The agrarian reform was a keystone of this change.
At every turning, the Sandinistas forced the "opposition bourgeoisie" to expose itself on questions that clearly involved the interests of the masses and of national independence. Gradually, the Robelos and the Cruzes revealed their 17. * Jose Luis Coraggio, Op. Cit., p.25.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
lack of any program for building national democracy, by putting their future in the hands of the contras and of Washington.
In the train of democratic and anti-imperialist measures that were duced at a rate that corresponded to the objective possibilities and to the advances in the consciousness and organization of the masses, the FLN began to carry out certain socialist tasks. It also showed its capacity to incorporate more and more into the revolutionary process social sectors that had not been in the forefront of the fight against the dictatorship, peasantry or even of the small working class of Managua.
The roots and the power of the FSLN's hegemony thus lie in the strategy based on the conception that "Sandino and Sandinoism are the symbol of our nationality, the standard around which the greatest part of the nation can be rallied to achieve the victory of our national aim ... And in this process of developing consciousness, the FSLN remains - as it was during the war of liberation - the vanguard that strives to understand the people and which is leading the people, while always remaining the people."
This sort of hegemony in fact presupposes Coraggio pointed out: "The Nicaraguan people have opted for a pluralist system, involving political parties that compete for power through elections. They have given recognition to the FSLN's revolutionary line, which means deepening the social, transformations of Nicaraguan society and rejecting US domination.
through its capacity to respond needs of the masses - its superiority on this level - as well as that of ideas over the other political forces.
In November 1984, Carlos Nunez said, "Sandinista hegemony will be assured to the extent that its representatives on the Sandinista front's National Unity slate are able to promote a draft of a political constitution suited reality of our country, one that can incorporate the most profound revolutionary conceptions, which will reflect the power in the hands of the people and, at the same time, the most modern juridic conceptions, as well as the most advanced ideas of the forces represented." (20)
This necessary combination between pluralism and hegemony has found an ideological and cultural underpinning in the special alliance that was forged in the Nicaraguan revolution. This was pointed up by Gallardo, an FSLN cadre, who alliance between three historic currents of humanity.
nationalism, nationalism of the poor masses represented by the traditional Nicaraguan people and, more particularly, programmatic heritage left by Sandino ... Another is Christianity, represented by the religious feeling and popular culture of the great masses of the people of Nicaragua and by the participation in the struggles of the revolutionary process of a large number of Christians, both in the insurrectionary war and in the process of consolidating the revolution ... Another is Marxism and the revolutionary experiences of other peoples that the Sandinista front absorbed during its fight against the dictatorship."(21)
Nonetheless, the growing aggression of some restrictions on democratic rights as regards the freedom of organization and activity of some opposition forces, over and above the military answer to these attacks that has already been given. Sandinista Front will make every effort to maintain pluralism, but in the last instance this situation will be determined aggressive policy of the States. If we face bombing, or if there is an intervention, we will find ourselves forced to introduce a state of war, and obviously that will affect the efforts we making to definitively democracy in Nicaragua." (22)
In conformity with the whole previous responsibility for restricting a series of rights will rest first of all with the imperialists, who consider this region part of their empire. But any such necessary restrictions will be directed against those who oppose the majority of the people becoming an independent political subject, those who, while they sometimes speak in the name of democracy, be prepared to applaud enthusiastically the attempts to break the combativity of the toiling masses by war, and who will collaborate with such attempts. understand that the Sandinista's strategy with respect to pluralism and "people's democracy" is not dictated by purely tactical and diplomatic considerations arising from the demands of the fight against imperialism. The FSLN does, of course, realize that developing such "people's democracy" is a means of struggle making it politically more difficult for the United States on the the international front
The
FSLN, thus, continually renews and consolidates its hegemony
The writing is on the wall for traitors Pastora and Robelo (DR)
the counterrevolutionary forces and the imperialists forced the FSLN to impose
MISTER ROBELD"
domestical and to mount an intervention. But, it has also seen that its strength lies above all in its capacity to rally a vast popular political consensus against the options of Reagan and his allies within Nicaragua.
In this respect, the combination of hegemony and pluralism also assures the defense of the revolution on the military level. And this is to say nothing of the guarantee it represents against all the bureaucratic deformations that, as the FSLN itself explains, continually threaten a besieged revolution that is being bled white.
In reality, an examination of the course of the revolution shows that, despite the escalating economic and military attacks, democratic rights, including their formal juridical expression, have been continually expanded. This has been the pattern from the Fundamental Statute of July 1979 to the November -1984 elections and the Nationalities 18. "Nous voulons la paix," p.15 19. Jose Luis Coraggio, "Elecciones: interrogantes desafios." in Pensamiento Propio, Managua, December 1984, p.9. 20. Carlos Nunez, quoted in Pensamiento Propio, December 1984, p.9. 21. Gallardo, "Nicaragua sandiniste devant la crise internationale, " 1985, p.38
Daniel Ortega, quoted in Pensamiento Propio, Managua, December 1984, p.10.
13
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NO PASARMNAN-AIME EDEN TRAIDO International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
To pursue this ideal of democratization, the officers of this new army should also be designated by, and responsible to, the people through processes that assure the political predominance of the popular classes.
"We do not advocate the election of officers by the soldiers but rather mechanisms for maintaining popular surveillance of the army, as well to assure that it is an institution controlled by the people and not one that controls the people." (25) The elections and the revolution the thinking part on few socialists and Marxists were by the fact, the undertook the popular approval revolutionary the FSLN. often be recognized but 1980 slogan, "The indicated, the first legitimacy, which the only purpose provide a new for the same dictator. and illiteracy made the democratic right
Europe, masses by general skip over.)
Back the FSLN promised elections. But it on meeting jobs, ete.), on directly in mass and laws.
literacy of activists, exclude ideological current.
by
National opportunity tions"
aimed contras, for mechanism by some with the masses.
mized by carrying forward will require new more that writers aspect of began! In fact, all the from a national ian Guard, an intense exercised national any
But it rejected the state
Coordinating
"negotiato Somoza.
undermining the modern and elections into the urgent elementary tasks the institutions.
operate as a
The role of the sectors to errors
Moreover, in building up this state,
FSLN is running into opposition not only from the contras, the imperialists, and their political allies but also from
FSLN the only centralized popular base that existed under Somoza, elections, lie the Church.
hierarchy that directs it, can accept neither the social and cultural transformconsolidation of a new state that is not prepared to leave a space in the civil cratic machine. This is the driving force into this counterrevolutionary policy of the top levels of the Church, which
"Nous voulons la paix," p 22.
26.
On this subject, see the resolution adopted by the
Eleventh
World Congress of the
Fourth
International in November
1979, of which the text was published in a special supplement to Intercontinental Press, January
1980.
27.
On this subject see the resolution adopted by pe Fished intentional dear was published in the eleventh World Congress over to in November 1979.
28.
On this question see Pensamiento Proprio,
October-November 1984.
Wol
(on the Miskitos), including the on the Rights and Guarantees of Nicaraguans in August 1970 and the Law on Political Parties of August 1983, to say nothing of all the basic social gains made in the same period.
The international press had had a lot say about the opposition daily La Prensa. It has not raised the same commotion about the inclination to independence in El Salvador, which has been accompanied by around 50,000 murders committed by the death squadrons linked to the military hierarchy. It has not taken the trouble to explain that the of La Prensa, which gets aid under the table from the imperialists, applies to reports of a military importance those related to the hoarding of consumer goods and speculation. It said virtually the almost total lifting electoral campaign.
A little detail somehow gets out in the international press's accounts of this censorship. It is that the censored pages circulate unimpeded in Managua in the form of photocopies that reach all the "free world" forgetfulness about its own history. In
"democratic" Switzerland, for example, from the outset
War the left was very systematically censored.
But Switzerland was far from being the latter the use of its means of communication in exchange for contracts for its industries, an influx of capital into its banks. It is hardly necessary, moreover, the point about the gagging of the French press more than once during the Algerian
From the moment of its triumph on July 19, 1979, the Nicaraguan revolution's strategic position in the "backyard"
### States imposed defense, conditioned by all the other mechanisms
The Sandinista People's Army (EPS) is the product of the fight against the dictatorship. "It is workers and peasants -50 percent of the soldiers in the army are illiterate - who hold the arms defending their class interests, Arce explained at the beginning of 1980. He continued as follows:
"It is the workers and peasants who hold the main instrument of power, that is, the army and the armed force, not only because of the principles that guide our armed forces but also because of the class composition of our brothers in the Sandinista People's Army, tate security forces." (23)
The military power of the new state
"at the same time as being sational army, the army of a nation
Two young Nicaraguans (DR) born in the course of the anti-imperialist popular struggle. It is not the army of a party but an army that recognizes the political content - and in the last analysis, the class context — of the plan for the nation given impetus by the Sandinista revolution." (24)
Alongside the professional army, very rapidly, starting in 1980, the FSLN set up people's opened the way for incorporating popular strata into the armed forces and complemented the system of military service. They also made it possible to integrate workers, peasants, students, and members of the liberal professions, on a voluntary basis, into the defense of the revolution.
measures of self-defense against those who in practice oppose by force the interests of the people can be taken, if necessary, both by the mass organizations and by the people's institution represented by the militias. The latter express to the highest degree the lack of separation between the army and the people. This is an example that the professional defenders of Western "democracy" would look for in vain anywhere else in Latin America.
very tasks of the army in production, in peasants — to say nothing of the wearing duties of the struggle against the contras -indicate that it is in essence a means for assuring the survival and development of the country in the interests of the
The Christian Base Communities explain a challenge facing the EPS. a longer-term one, involving the demoeratization of the army. It is clear that a professional army will have an important place in Nicaragua for a long time. 'All arms to the people' is a slogan that expresses today an entirely valid road toward democratizing national defense ... 23. Bayardo Arce, Op.Cit., p.30. 24. Carlos M. Vilas, La revolucion sandinista, Editions Legasa, Buenos Aires, 1984, p.202.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985
Sandinista fighters (DR) provides a channel for a major part of the political opposition to the new regime.
The ability of the mass organizations to intervene in this process of institutionalization depends first of all on their retaining the autonomy from these institutions. Carlos Nunez pointed up the danger that an idea might begin to grow up among the popular masses, as a result of the malfunctioning of the state apparatus and "bureaucratic deviations" that "the state does not represent them [the masses] ... We must, therefore, take into account the reality that to a certain extent the mass organizations sometimes act like parastate bodies because they do not find in the state bodies the receptivity, dynamism and agility necessary for solving problems."
From this, Nunez drew the conclusion that the mass organizations "must also be instruments capable of expressing, with autonomy, the demands of the social sectors they represent. And, therefore, they will have to resort to both the most usual and the most unusual means." (29)
Involvement in the running of the state is a right that the masses have won in their struggle. It is not a concession made by the new regime to the workers, the peasants, and the pauperized urban masses. It is a fundamental right with a great practical importance for any transition to socialism.
One form of such direct participation lies in the discussion of various health and educational programs by the organized users of these services, as well as by the workers in these sectors. One of the most important forms is involvement 16 in economic management. This is where the apprenticeship in direct administration is the most complicated where inertia, both in agriculture and in the rickety industrial sector, most makes itself felt, where the technical and cultural handicaps have the greatest effect, where the technicians' uneasiness in the face of a dynamic of self-management merits a whole separate study in itself. In this area, the Sandinistas are running into big problems, in particular because they cannot reabsorb the "informal sector" (pedlars, etc.) Their strong point is that they recognize and discuss these questions. This, indeed, is another dimension of "Sandinista democracy."
Finally, the state apparatus cannot function in a neutral way. "Working for the government today demands not inconsiderable sacrifices," (30) given the low wages. The private sector does not fail to try to lure away technicians by offering more attractive salaries. In this way, it is seeking to undermine the administrative functioning of the new regime. But, despite the abnegation of a great many "functionaries, the problem of control over government employees remains unsolved. In fact, this question is being raised publicly:
"As regards the relationship between the government and the party, it is necessary to perfect mechanisms by which government functionaries can have their stewardship examined by the people, as well as means to prevent the government's logic from becoming confused with that of partisan organizations." (31)
This body of questions will underlie all the discusssions on the new constitution and on the nature of the new party to be consolidated. Among other things, in the framework of the powers devolved on the legislature, it will be necessary to clarify the specific decision-making powers of the mass organizations in the areas that concern them and in economic management. This will be one of the key points in the coming institutionalization process.
The FSLN has explained several times that it has been able to draw the essential lessons from the past experiences and to take account quite accurately of the specific context in which the revolution is unfolding. It has avoided the Scylla and Charbidis, of on the one hand, trying to follow an abstract model, and, on the other, underestimating the underlying questions of the transition to socialism.
In the last analysis, the model that will prove valid will be the one that corresponds to the needs of the people, and that the people will defend wholeheartedly against growing attacks of all sorts against the revolution.
For us, this revolution that represents the advances made in the understanding of socialist revolutions has the right to solidarity from every anti-imperialist activist. And at the same time, it also demands that we make a determined effort to draw the lessons of an experience that is becoming part of the heritage of the working people of the entire world. 29. Carlos M. Vilas, La revolucion Sandinista, p. 364. 30. Carlos Nunez Telles, op cit. p. 15 and following.
"Nous voulons la paix," p. 16. 32. Idem.
International Viewpoint 20 May 1985