Don Rojas speaks on lessons of defeated Grenadian Revolution

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time, the who declined These meetings were democratic in the sense that they allowed ample discussion and input. But they didn't make any fundamental decisions. This power was not in the hands of these institutions.

Rojas: That is correct.

S.A.: How did the party see the relationship between the NJM and the mass organizations?

Rojas: The relationship was one where the NJM played—or should have played—a guiding role in the development and direction that the mass organizations were to take.

The ultimate objective was to empower the mass organizations and institutionalize them as organs of people's power that would play not just a participatory role, but a decision-making role, in carrying out policies presented by the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG).

This was the objective behind the establishment of a new constitution—a People's Constitution—-that was drafted by the democratic involvement of the masses and the mass organizations. This process, unfortunately, had only just begun at the time the revolution collapsed.

Today I am very heartened by the successful conclusion, in Nicaragua, of the process that has led to the approval of the new constitution. That is exactly how we, in Grenada, had envisioned a truly democratic people's constitution evolving.

S.A: Maurice Bishop used to joke about how, under the parliamentary democracy of the United States and Great Britain, the people had the right to democratically pull the lever once every four years. He said he envisioned a society where the actual decision-making power rested in the hands of the people and their organizations on a day-to-day basis.

Nicaragua is obviously a popular revolution, like Grenada was. But the Nicaraguan unions and mass organizations are essentially participatory. The FSLN makes the final decisions. The FSLN is as concerned as you are about factionalism. But from everything I saw during my recent visit, and from everything I have read there does not exist in Nicaragua an institutionalized structure of workers' control whereby the masses can rule through their own organizations.

Rojas: I think the challenge before us is to find a formula that guarantees that the people can participate in national decision-making-either through their popular organizations or through their parliamentary representa -tives-—while at the same time maintaining the important role that the vanguard party has to play in pushing the revolution forward.

There are no schemas or formulas that can or should be followed. You can learn from all the experiences of other "The Coard current...confused the vanguard role of the party with the revolution itself."

Y 1987 revolutions, but in the final analysis you have to proceed based on the concrete conditions that prevail in your own country.

One of the mistakes that we made in Grenada is that we overlooked the importance of taking into consider -ation the objective factor at all times. I think too much subjectivism began to creep into the NJM and into the thinking of the leadership of the NJM.

That subjectivism, fueled by individual ambitions, led unfortunately to a series of events and decisions that were catastrophic. Maurice Bishop was arrested. This was a subjective decision taken by a handful of individuals in the leadership of the NJM without the legitimacy or approval of the rank and file of the party, let alone the government, the mass organizations, or the masses.

The government was never consulted in this decision. The party was not the government. But in the reality of Grenada, the party was paramount to the government.

S.A.: Who made the decision to arrest Bishop?

Rojas: The decision was made by the leaders of the Ministry of the Interior with the approval of members of the Central Committee. Leaders of the Ministry of the Interior were also members of the Central Committee. So, basically, we are talking about the same individuals.

S.A.: Returning to the subject of workers' control and democratic decision-making. The model that Marxists traditionally look to is the Russian model, that is, the model of the soviets established in the Soviet Union in 1917. The Bolshevik Party was the vanguard party, but the power of the revolution was vested in the soviets.

The soviets were qualitatively larger and more representative than any other institutions in Russian society. The unions and the Bolshevik Party were relatively small. The Bolsheviks had the political majority in the leading bodies of the soviets because they had won this majority.

But the soviets were multiparty institutions. They allowed for free and open discussion and decision-making. And they—not the Bolshevik Party-were the government, the Soviet government. Later, as the revo -lution proceeded under Stalin, the power of the soviets disintegrated, and the party took on a bureaucratic role.

Many in the radical movement don't believe that working people-particularly in the underdeveloped countries-can rule society through their own mass organizations. They say that the people aren't yet ready to rule and that they don't have the necessary education. In my view, this kind of thinking is extremely paternalistic...

Rojas: It is paternalistic and arrogant, and borders on racism.

S.A.: The Russian workers and peasants "It was under the liberal Kennedy administration that the Bay of Pigs invasion was conducted." but they learned how their class interests.

In Grenada, was there discussion within the NJM on whether or not the people should rule through their own institutions—like the Russian workers and peasants ruled through the early soviets?

Rojas: There were basically two schools of thought on this question. One of them, the Bishop school, favored rule by the people as soon as it was possible. But it understood that rule by the people could not be separated from mass education-political mass education —as well as formal mass education. I share that view.

Another school of thought believed that the masses could attain the necessary political consciousness to rule, but that this would take a long time, and it could not happen without a party to guide this process. This school of thought believed that the party would have to be paramount in this process for quite some time. Bernard Coard was in that school of thought.

What happened in Grenada in October 1983 is that Coard's current degenerated to the point where it confused the vanguard role of the party with the revolution itself. A lot of Coard's supporters began to substitute the party for the revolution.

Once you do that, once you think that the party is superior to the revolution or that the party is the revolution, you will almost inevitably develop an antipeople arrogance.

The Coard current considered the people to be backward and Bishop to be backward. The only way to fight that backwardness, in their analysis, was to get Bishop out of the way. The ultimate manifestation of that arrogance was the massacre of Bishop and his supporters at Fort Rupert in October 1983.

S.A.: It seems, therefore, that Bishop's arrest decisive turning point in the revolution.

Rojas: Absolutely.

S.A.: Unison Whiteman led a demonstration to free Bishop from his house arrest. Ten thousand people, led by Bishop, proceeded to Fort Rupert. Wasn't the power of the revolution re-vested, so to speak, in the people at that point?

Rojas: Exactly. The most important mass movement in the modern history of the Grenadian people took place on October 19, 1983, when the people, on their own initiative, took things into their own hands. Through their actions they expressed their determination to win back the power that had been stolen from them-that had been usurped by Coard and the others.

S.A.: At that moment there was a confrontation between the will of a revolutionary people who supported the programs of the government, and the party, which was out of step, to say the least.

Rojas: Correct. At that moment the party became the number one contradiction in the eyes of the people. And objectively they were correct.

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political power and their economic privileges.