Lucio Jimenez speaks: "The informal economy is the enemy of the revolution

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The following is an interview with Lucio Jimenez, general secretary of the Sandinista Trade Union Federation (CST) of Nicaragua. The interview was conducted by Jeff Mackler in Managua on Nov. 5, 1986, Socialist Action: What is the CST?

Lucio Jimenez: The CST- is the largest industrial union federation in Nicaragua. It represents 100,000 members in the food, textile, sugar, oil, metal, longshore, and construction industries.

S.A.: What percentage of the employers you deal with are private and what percent are public? And what kind of controls can your union exercise on those companies that are owned by the capitalists?

Jimenez: In the case of the sugar industry, 50 percent of production is in the hands of one private producer. Half of oil and soap production is private. We could go on down the list and say that about 40 per -cent to 50 percent of industrial production is in the private or mixed capital sector.

The state has a capacity of control over these enterprises which is quite high. At one point we had some very severe problems of decapitalization by the private sector. What we did was propose the confiscation of some of these enterprises —and some were confiscated. The govern -ment has also drafted a law to prevent decapitalization.

But in general our efforts are directed at getting the workers to understand that what is fundamental is to produce for the revolution-independently of whom they may work for. Production is the most important task of the revolution.

S.A.: What are the central reasons why A283 by their promise to pay back Somoza's foreign debt to the imperialist bankers. This is a pledge that the revolution is not a threat to world capitalism.

More and more, however, Sandinista leaders are finding that this pledge can only be kept at the expense of the people themselves and that the Nicaraguan capitalist class is incapable of advancing the interests of the workers and peasants. This deep contradiction within the the government and the unions don't take over the private industry and simply run it themselves?

Jimenez: What we are trying to do is consolidate the vital production sector of the economy-which is the state sector.

What matters is not the percentage of production that remains in the private sector. What is important is the influence we can exert on all other sectors and branches of the economy through the medium of the state.

Moreover, we cannot eliminate the private sector by decree. A large percentage of our private sector is made up of small industrial entrepreneurs who are really more like artisans.

We may consider keeping a large private industrial sector-so long as it produces for the revolution and fulfills its social obligations.

S.A.: Do you have the right to look at the books of the employers to know what their profits and production are?

Jimenez: No. We don't have the formal right. But in practice we have been able to look at the books. Many times we have workers who are very close to the managers of these companies.

But financial control is not even that crucial because in many. Cases these companies are subsidized by the state, meaning that the state can exert its control over the credits and distribution of inputs to these companies.

S.A.: There appears to be a growing black market or informal sector of the economy. Why should a member of your Nicaraguan Revolution, though, has yet to be definitively resolved.

But even if the Sandinistas were to break with the mixed economy, the dependent and backward character of its economy underscores the fact that, by itself, Nicaragua cannot break out of the straitjacket of underdevelopment imposed on it by the international capitalist system.

In the last year, for example, whatever union work for a fixed wage when he or she can work in the informal sector?

Jimenez: This is a problem of revolutionary consciousness. A worker of the formal sector can go over to the informal sector and make 10 times more money. The informal sector to us is nothing more than a system of speculation. The Nicaraguan working class has characterized the informal sector as the enemy of the revolution.

I say "enemy of the revolution" because this sector is taking money and profits away from the revolution.

The workers, with the level of consciousness that they have acquired, are not politically and ideologically motivated to become part of the speculative system. But some workers, whose personal situations are very desperate, do go over to the informal sector.

S.A.: Many of the peasants have weapons to defend the land and to defend the revolution. Is this also the case in the large industries in the various cities?

Jimenez: Of course.

S.A.: How do the workers get the guns and how are they organized to use them?

Jimenez: In the past we had Civil Defense Brigades at the workplace. Then the revolution created the Patriotic Military Service. Today, in the cities of the Pacific, thousands of workers are in a position to handle combat weapons.

S.A.: Where are the guns kept?

Jimenez: In the military barracks where the workers report for duty in case of an emergency. The factories may also have progress achieved in increasing agricultural production was more than canceled by the 53-percent drop in the world price of cotton, a major export crop.

Fluctuations in the price of Nicaragua's other export crops, orchestrated by the imperialist nations, make economic progress difficult—if not impossible. In the long run, as well as the short, Nicaragua's fate is tied to the struggles of revolutionary people throughout the world who seek to replace capitalism with a system of social organization and production rationally planned to meet human needs.

Nicaragua is heavily dependent on the Soviet Union for economic aid. A political price tag is inevitably attached to such aid. This is one explanation, for example, for the recent article in Barricada endorsing the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The Nov. 5 Barricada characterized the revolutionary movement of the Hungarian workers against the bureaucratic Stalinist state as a "counterrevolutionary uprising smashed with the help of Soviet troops."

But while the FSLN defers to or supports a number of the reactionary policies of the degenerated or deformed workers' states, whose pressure is constantly exerted, the Sandinista leadership identifies more with the revolutionary current of the Castro-led Cuban Revolution, which in practice has rejected many of the class-collaborationist policies of world Stalinism.

FSLN membership

There are three levels of membership in the FSLN: sympathizers, aspiring mem -bers, and full members. The latter are called "militantes" or militants. I attended an FSLN "promotion" meeting at the weapons for defense. This depends on the importance of the factory.

S.A.: If the union feels an employer is intransigent, can it go out on strike?

Jimenez: The strike is no longer the method of struggle we use—not in the state, private, or mixed enterprises.

Instead we have now instituted a process of dialogue between the union, the state, and the company. In these discussions we make proposals. If there is a positive response to the workers' demands, this is explained to the workers. If the response is not favorable, we also take back the results of the dialogue to the workers.

In the great majority of cases the workers do not make excessive or unrealistic demands. They do not put the traditional types of pressure on the government and the employers that you would find in the United States or elsewhere.

Workers understand the aggressive foreign policy of the United States and they also know why we must maintain the private sector.

Socialist Action/Toff Mackler university in Managua. A thousand people came to celebrate the admission to the FSLN of some 50 new members, the majority of them women. Similar mass meetings were taking place throughout the country for the same purpose.

An FSLN keynote speaker explained the meaning of the Nicaraguan Revolution to the youthful audience. He said: "There has been no true revolution which has not been attacked by a counterrevolution. This is our situation today. In a real sense you have to be crazy to be a Sandinista-to want to fight against the greatest power on earth for your people and think you can win."

He continued, "You had to be crazy to think you could beat Somoza's guard and build a new society. And you have to be crazy to believe that we can build a new life for ourselves and our people based on love and respect for the truth. But we are crazy in the FSLN, and that is the kind of militants we want."

An FSLN representative indicated that the membership of the FLN today stands at 25,000 in all categories. It is a young and dedicated party with the great bulk of its members in their twenties. It has the great respect of the Nicaraguan people.

It was my impression that the FSLN remains uncertain about its future course, believing that pragmatism—or attention to the issues of the moment—will suffice to resolve the current problems facing the revolution.

But it is also clear that the dynamic of the unfolding revolution is stimulating important discussions among the FSLN leadership regarding the possibility of maintaining the "experiment" with the mixed economy. The outcome of these discussions will have a profound impact on Nicaragua's future.

IN DECEMBER 1986 9