[...Nicaragua (continued from page 1) been showing signs…]

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...Nicaragua (continued from page 1: “A threat to all workers”) been showing signs of an important shift in its policy toward the Salvadoran revolutionaries.

For example, the Ministry of Government recently issued a warning to Guillermo Ungo, president of the FDR, against making political declarations while in Mexico. Furthermore, Mexico sent its foreign minister to attend the inauguration of Jose Napoleon Duarte, in contrast to its refusal to even send observers to the 1982 Salvadoran elections.

Meanwhile, the contra attacks against Nicaragua continue. And the Reagan administration continues its propaganda campaign inside and outside of Congress to win support for overt, "legal" funding of the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries.

The Reagan administration showed its "proof" of Nicaraguan aid to the Salvadoran guerillas-color slides of three pack mules and some dugout canoes-at a congressional briefing. The briefing was organized by CIA Director William Casey, Secretary of State George Schultz, and General John Vesey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Despite the recent cut-off of overt aid by the Senate to anti-Sandinista rebels— aid that will now have to be funneled clandestinely-tensions in Central America continue to increase. As Viron Vaky, former U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela, noted in an opinion column in the June 18 New York Times, "What the Administration appears to have in mind, therefore, is simply to press the Sandinistas until they cry 'uncle' —until they agree largely without conditions to our demands. For the White House, 'negotiations' would be about working out the details-in effect, the continuation of confrontation by other means."

Yet the capacity of the Sandinistas to resist these pressures has been impressive and clearly signals their determination not to submit to the pressures of the United States. In mid-June, the Sandinistas succeeded in simultaneously pushing back the forces of Eden Pastora, who is recovering from an assassination attempt, and the forces of Alfonso Robelo's Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDE).

In the case of ARDE, the Sandinista offensive was so successful that the arrival of 1000 contra refugees in Costa Rica caused that country's government to declare a national state of emergency. Even ARDE had to admit that the Sandinistas captured seven of their positions and that over 300 contra soldiers deserted.

That is why the United States, if it wishes to accomplish its objectives in Nicaragua, will have to rely on U.S. troops. And that is precisely why, at this time, the greatest responsibility of supporters of the Central American revolution is to build a movement powerful enough to prevent the U.S. government from carrying out its plans in that region.

But no matter how talented Cochran was as a writer, editor, speaker, political strategist, and popularizer of Marxist theory, including its philosophical side, he lost confidence in the future ability of the American workers to carry out their historical mission: the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a socialist society. That is why he opposed efforts to build the SWP and advocated publishing a magazine for "educational" reasons. He completely abandoned the ideas that he had taught the Toledo unemployed organization.

In his last years Cochran published a few books, the first in 1978 called "Labor and Communism, the Conflict that Shaped American Unions." This was reviewed by me in the December 1978 issue of International Socialist Review. In the preface to this book, Cochran thanks Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security advisor and prominent cold warrior, for his help and "unfailing consideration" during the term of his fellowship at Columbia University. This is a center of cold war Sovietology which Cochran would have avoided like the plague in former days.

All in all, the Cochran story is a sad one: a talented person who was influenced too much by conjunctural events that threw him off the track and disoriented him from the objective of the socialist revolution.

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Interview with exiled labor leader: