'Social Pact and the Revolution

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'But the Revolution has another • Catherine Cusic, Coordinator, Nicaragua Center for Community "There are two books in English that have to be read by serious supporters of the FSLN in Nicaragua, George Black's Triumph of the People' and the just-published 'Nicaragua: Dynamics of an Unfinishe "Although I have serious disagreements with some of Benjamin's conclusions, his material is challenging and he raises questions that need to be examined by those of us making serlous social change."

Prof. John Weeks, Middlebury College, Vermont "For those who look for new thinking on Nicaragua, Prof. James Rhodes, Luther College, Iowa (from Library Journal): "Benjamin provides a tightly argued and carefully documented case Written by Socialist Action newspaper editor Alan Benjamin in collaboration with researchers at Managua's ITZTANI Institute, 186 pp. Intro. by Rod Holt and Jeff Mackler. To order, send $8.95 (includes $1 postage) to:

Walnut Publishing Co., 3435 Army St., Rm. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

In the aftermath of the electoral defeat of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in the Feb. 25 Nicaraguan elections, a growing clamor has developed among the FSLN's rank-and-file members for greater democracy inside the Front. The membership has insisted on an open discussion of the reasons that led to the FSLN's electoral defeat and of what strategy the FSLN Should adopt toward the government of Violeta Chamorro.

In response to this pressure, the Sandinista leadership agreed to hold a national convention of the FSLN in the spring of 1991. This is the first convention of the FSLN since its founding 27 years ago.

Soon after the decision was taken in June 1990 to hold a convention, the Sandinista newspapers, Barricada and Nuevo Diario, began to run articles critical of Sandinista policy decisions. One such article in Nuevo Diario by Carlos Fonseca Terán went so far as to call for the removal of the current nine FSLN commanders and the election of a new leadership at the upcoming FSLN convention. (The dominant current in the FSLN, however, rejects this view, arguing that the election of a new leadership is not-and will not be on the convention agenda.)

The increasing ideological debate and struggle inside the FSLN is the reflection of the class struggle inside Nicaragua.

Those sectors in the FLN that gained material privileges during the Front's 10 years in power support the FSLN leadership's social pact (or "concertación" as it is called in Nicaragua) with the Chamorro government. They also support the decision by Daniel Ortega to affiliate the FSLN with the Second International (the Social-Democratic international current headed by German Socialist Party Chairman Willy Brandt.)

Those sectors closest to the rank-and-file workers and peasants, however, have begun to speak out against the social pact, arguing that it is political suicide to share political power with Chamorro. It is among these FSLN members that the campaign to elect a new FSLN leadership has taken root.

We are reprinting below excerpts from an opinion article that appeared in the Aug. 25, 1990, issue of Barricada, the FSLN's daily newspaper. This article by Augusto Zamora gives a sense of the debate currently taking place inside the FSLN.

—ALAN BENJAMIN On the TV screens, the Chamorro government promotes its slogans calling for "concertación" [social pact between the workers and the capitalists]. They say this is the magic key to economic salvation. Off the screen, however, the mayor of Managua lays off public workers and expels squatters from city lands. Agricultural cooperatives are also assaulted, and workers and peasants are being killed.

Down here below, from where we were supposedly going to govern, we are all taking a beating from the new government. Can there be any doubt why so many people question the viability of "concertación?"

On the one hand, Chamorro and her government call for a "national dialogue" with the workers and peasants, but on the other hand they ignore the agreements they signed with the National Workers Front (FNT) following the July general strike. They say they are open to dialogue, but in the next breath they turn around and say that the government's economic policies are not subject to discussion.

Let's call things by their right name.

"Concertación" or social pact-for the government is a way to swindle the workers Catherine Cusic, Coordinator, Action (NICCA), San Francisco Revolution' by Alan Benjamin. necessary reading."

for what he terms an incomplete revolution." back political power.' and peasants. No sooner were the agreements that put an end to the May and July general strikes signed than Chamorro shelved them and proceeded to attack our gains and rights.

What kind of social pact can there be with a government that betrays its promises? What guarantees do we have that the "national dialogue" won't be just another swindle?

These are questions being asked not just by supporters of the Sandinistas, but by the large majority of the Nicaraguan people.

But another, more profound question is also involved. The new government talks about reprivatizing and "liberalizing" the SOCIALISI economy-from denationalizing foreign trade, to undoing the agrarian reform, to ending all social spending. In other words, Chamorro wants to liquidate the Nicaraguan Revolution.

With the Revolution-or not?

In this context, what we Sandinistas have to decide is whether or not we want to defend the gains of the Revolution. Do we stay with the Revolution or do we ditch it?

The Chamorro government has a plan. To be successful in implementing it, it needs the cooperation of the workers and their unions; they must accept massive layoffs and give up their right to strike. The government can even bribe the leaders of the unions or the opposition political parties to ensure that their program is implemented.

But the Revolution has another urgent mission. It must survive!

We must genuinely reorganize to win back political power. We must fight to prevent Nicaragua from becoming, once again, a colony of the United States. We must defend the rights and gains of the workers and peasants. We must make sure that the blood we spilled for our revolution was not spilled in vain.

Voices in the government-and among the Sandinista leadership—tell us incessantly that the defense of the "nation" requires that we accept the social pact. But whose "nation" are they talking about anyhow?

It is not the nation of the dispossessed, of the growing numbers of unemployed, of the tens of thousands who are starving. They're not concerned about the nation of the vast majority of the Nicaraguan people. No, the "nation" this government seeks to defend is the "nation" of the rich—of the capitalists.

It's about time we began to think seriously about where the interests of the Revolution-of the real Nicaragua-really lie, and how we're going to defend them.

It's time to drop our strategic orientation of "dialoguing" with Chamorro. This strategy is political suicide.

Let the government govern by itself, without our help. And let the opposition be an opposition and the trade unions function as genuine unions. Any other conception will simply lead to the death of the Revolution. Is that what we want? Quo vadis, Nicaragua?

...Russian Revolution (continued from previous page) politically was the prerequisite to move forward.

In an article written on the fourth anniversary of the revolution Lenin discussed the main goal and objective of the 1917 revolution:

"The direct and immediate object of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic one, namely, to destroy the survivals of medievalism and keep them away completely, to purge Russia of this barbarism, of this shame, and to remove this immense obstacle to all culture and progress in our country."

"The last four years have proved to the hilt," he continued, "that our interpretation of Marxism on this point, and our estimate of the experience of former revolutions were correct. We have consummated the bourgeois-democratic revolution as nobody had done before. We are advancing towards the socialist revolution consciously, firmly and unswervingly, knowing that it is not separated from the bourgeois-democratic revolution by a Chinese Wall, and knowing too that (in the last analysis) struggle alone will determine how far we shall succeed in consolidating our victories. Time will show. But we see even now that a tremendous amount-tremendous for this ruined, exhausted and backward country-has already been done towards the socialist transformation of society."

It was that consolidation of the new political power of the workers and peasants by expropriating the capitalist class economically that allowed the new Soviet Union to survive imperialist intervention and civil The subsequent degeneration of the revolution and the crimes of Stalin have not yet been able to reverse these earth-shaking changes begun by the Russian workers and peasants in 1917.

Next month we'll see how Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolutionary leadership responded to similar imperialist threats and led the people of Cuba to establish the first workers state in the Western Hemisphere. • ON OCTOBER 1990 19

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urgent mission. It must survive! We must genuinely reorganize to win A critical analysis of the Sandinista Revolution