How can the Nicaraguans advance their revolution?

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Nicaraguan soldiers on a patrol near Honduran border. The Sandinistas have downplayed the class conflct inside Nicaragua, stressing national unity against the U.S.-backed contras.

In late July 1988, the Nicaraguan government sent a telegram to Mexico's ruling-party candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to congratulate him for his "victory" in the country's July 6 presidential But Salinas de Gortari, the candidate of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), was not the winner in these elections, though this was the official result. He won by unprecedented fraud against his main bourgeois challenger, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, who ran on a populist program.

All the supporters of Mexican capitalist "stability," fearing that a Cárdenas victory would destabilize the Mexican political system, came to the support of Salinas de Gortari. This includes the imperialists, of course, but also the Soviet bureaucracy and the international social democracy.

Unfortunately, albeit for different reasons, the list also includes the Cuban Communist Party and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua.

The decision to give support to a capitalist politician in Mexico who has been repudiated by a majority of Mexico's workers and peasants-hundreds of thousands of whom continue to march throughout the country to protest the fraud represents a serious political mistake on the part of the Nicaraguan FSLN.

This mistake is consistent with the FSLN government's past practice of giving political support to the Mexican regime.

For example, during the 1982 Mexican presidential campaign, FSLN Commander Jaime Wheelock toured Mexico to support the candidacy of PRI candidate Miguel de la Madrid, a man who went on to become one of the country's most despised presidents for his ruthless attacks on the Mexican working class.

Wheelock went so far as to praise Mexico's corrupt one-party capitalist system for being "a true model of socialist democracy." (quoted in Bandera Socialista, June 1982)

Breaking Nicaragua's isolation The Sandinistas and their international supporters argue that the Nicaraguan government must seek allies in the European social democracy or among Latin American states to break out of the isolation imposed by the U.S.-contra war. "The revolution must survive," they say, "and it is legitimate to use diplomacy to block the aims of U.S. imperialism." Such reasoning is one-sided and therefore incorrect.

It is of course legitimate for the Nicaraguan government to engage in diplomatic maneuvers aimed at providing additional "breathing space" for the revolution. No one should question the fact that the Sandinistas have a gun at their head and that they may have to make serious political concessions to the imperialists at the negotiating table. We surely cannot fault them for this.

(Our main task in this country is to minimize-and ultimately put an end to the concessions U.S. imperialism can wrench from Nicaragua by building a mass movement against contra aid and for Nicaragua's right to self-determination.)

But what the Sandinista leadership fails to understand is that the political maneuvers of the Nicaraguan government should not obscure or violate the political principles of the party at the helm of the revolution. For the leadership of the FSLN, party principles are adapted to the practical negotiating postures of the government. This is a mistaken view the Sandinistas have borrowed from the Cuban Communist Party.

Arias "peace plan"

Shortly after the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian workers and peasants to power in October 1917, the Bolshevik-led government had to agree to the rotten peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk. 10 SOCIALIST ACTION Under the treaty, the Soviet Union had to give up extensive territory-notably the Ukraine—to Germany.

But the Bolshevik Party never gave political support to the treaty, even though it understood that the Soviet government was compelled to sign it. It condemned it, and it warned its international supporters to do likewise.

Unlike the Bolshevik leadership, whose diplomatic maneuvers were always conducted within their major objective of advancing the world revolution and truthfully explaining their actions to the world's workers, the Sandinista government has given full and uncritical political support to the Arias "peace plan."

But the Arias plan, which the Sandinistas cannot be faulted for having to sign, is not favorable to the Nicaraguan Revolution. It has not led to the disarming of the contras, even though the Sandinistas have abided by all the plan's provisions.

In fact, in the name of the plan, the contras and their international supporters are demanding greater and greater political concessions from the Sandinistas. Their aim, through this plan, is to set into motion a logic of concessions they hope will lead inevitably to the reversal of the revolution.

The Arias plan, moreover, is aimed at stabilizing the other capitalist dictatorial regimes in the region. It explicitly denies any legitimacy to the revolutionary forces in the rest of Central America, thereby OCTOBER 1988 contributing to the Nicaraguan Revolution.

Consequences in Mexico

By giving political support to this "peace plan," the Sandinista leadership has incorrectly fueled illusions in the capitalist backers of the plan, such as the Mexican government.

In Mexico, the FSLN's support to the ruling party and government was expressed concretely at a binational solidarity conference held Feb. 3, 1988, in the border city of Mexicali, Baja California. The conference was called to demand that the Mexican government, one of the world's major oil producers, send free or low-cost oil to Nicaragua. The gathering was organized by the local Committee in Solidarity with Nicaragua and Central America and was actively supported by the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), Mexican section of the Fourth International.

The Mexican government, under pressure from the U.S. State Department, had cut off vitally needed oil shipments to Nicaragua in 1985 when, as a result of the U.S.contra war, the Nicaraguan government had fallen behind on its oil payments.

Unfortunately, despite the claims of many conference participants that such a demand could mobilize hundreds of thousands of Mexican working people in the streets—and even force the government to renew its oil shipments—Raúl Cuadra, a Nicaraguan leader in charge of solidarity INSIDE:

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The Mexican government, Cuadra said, is a friend of Nicaragua because of its support to the Contadora peace process and the Arias plan. As a result of his intervention, the conference failed to issue a call for oil to Nicaragua. Conference participants, though disturbed, were unwilling to challenge the authority of the representative of the Nicaraguan government.

Revolutionists of action

The Nicaraguan Revolution is under siege. Every reactionary force in the world —from the imperialists, to their national bourgeois partners, to the Soviet bureaucracy—is trying to strangle it.

The Sandinistas are trying to do their best within the framework of their nationalist approach to world politics. The agrarian reform, the nationalization of important sectors of the economy, and the arming cf the masses represent important gains for the Nicaraguan people.

After over nine years of war, the Sandinistas have not surrendered to the imperialists' demands, despite all the pressures. The revolution's energy has been sapped, but it is still alive.

The Sandinistas are archtypical "revolutionists of action" who have displayed a capacity to go beyond their limited strategic goals in their genuine commitment to advance the interests and well-being of the masses.

But their political weaknesses are very real. And it does no service to the Nicaraguan Revolution for revolutionists in Nicaragua or elsewhere to cover up or justify these weaknesses.

Extension of domestic policy The Sandinistas' mistaken foreign policy is an extension of their domestic errors.

Fundamentally, the Sandinistas lack confidence in the ability of the working class and the rural toilers to wield political power in their own name and through their own democratically controlled institutions of workers' democracy—both in Nicaragua and on a world scale.

This has led the government to persist in maintaining a policy of "national unity" with the Nicaraguan capitalists. According to this policy, it has been necessary to subordinate the class conflict inside Nicaragua to the needs of national defense against the U.S.-backed contras. This has meant giving the capitalists major economic concessions to gain their support.

The Sandinistas also believe that they must maintain a capitalist mixed economy as a way of stimulating economic production and obtaining credits from the Latin American and European bourgeoisies.

Contrary to the hopes of the Sandinista leaders, however, the capitalist agro-export sector, which still controls the dominant sector of the economy, has not contributed "patriotically" to production. Though they have received immense state subsidies and other incentives, these capitalists have refused to invest productively in the economy. In 1986 and 1987, in fact, the flight of capital and the losses due to (continued on next page)

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