The Cuban road to socialism: A path not taken in Nicaragua

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16 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1990 In July 1979 the workers and peasants of Nicaragua led an anti-imperialist and democratic revolution against the pro-U.S. dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.

Under the leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the people of Nicaragua began to take their destiny into their own hands. The old army was smashed and a new Sandinista army was created.

The new government began giving land to the peasants and took other steps to enhance the political and economic power of the people against the old ruling class of big land owners and capitalists.

In response to these moves the Nicaraguan capitalists began to fight back with the support of the U.S. government. Decapitalization and other domestic sabotage was carried While much death and destruction occurred, the people of Nicaragua fought off the contras, and by 1987 the mercenaries were militarily defeated.

Yet imperialism continued its destabilization of the country. Finally the FSLN leadership opted for bourgeois elections in February 1990 where the pro-capitalist and counterrevolutionary Violeta Chamorro defeated FLN leader Daniel Ortega for president.

That electoral defeat registered a process that had begun years earlier: the erosion of revolutionary power to the point that the new government now represents the interests of capitalism and imperialism. Chamorro in fact has proclaimed that her chief goal is the rapid implementation of a full market economy.

Loyal opposition

The Sandinistas have responded as a loyal opposition. Strikes and demonstrations are used as a pressure tactic This is consistent with the policy they followed early in the revolution: seeking compromise with the internal counterrevolutionary opposition even if it meant not giving land to the peasants and not protecting fully the rights of the working class.

The FSLN leaders defended a "mixed economy" policy—an alternative strategy to that followed by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 and the July 26 Movement in Cuba in 1959.

The FSLN top leadership continues to defend their policies despite the electoral defeat. (A debate is underway in the FSLN as it prepares for its first ever national convention in the spring of 1991.)

Bayardo Arce, a member of the FSLN National Directorate, went so far as to say that while the FSLN is pro-socialist it rejects the socialist "theorists of the last century" —Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, the founders of scientific socialism.

Is Marxism invalid today? Has it been outdated? Many pro-capitalist commentators say yes, pointing to the collapse of "communism" in Eastern Europe.

What happened in Eastern Europe, however, was the collapse of Stalinism. It was the anti-socialist policies of the ruling anti-worker bureaucracies that led to the depoliticization of the people and the economic decline of those post-capitalist societies. Genuine communism is based on workers' democratic rule.

What happened in Nicaragua was not inevitable. The shift in the relationship of forces and the return of openly capitalist forces in governmental power could have been prevented if a different strategy had been followed by the FSLN. It was a default in leadership that led to the victory of Chamorro.

Last month I discussed how a revolutionary communist leadership in Russia facing greater challenges destroyed capitalism and established a workers' state.

What was decisive then was the existence of a revolutionary workers' party, the Bolsheviks, that led the soviets (democratic councils) to power. The Bolsheviks were led by revolutionary Marxists.

Lessons of Cuban Revolution Some 42 years later the Cuban workers and peasants overthrew the pro-U.S. puppet government of Fulgencio Batista.

Led by figures from petty-bourgeois backgrounds, the July 26 Movement organized the revolution. Neither soviets or a mass workers party existed. Instead the revolution was organized primarily by a Rebel Army in the countryside that had broad sympathy in the cities.

The rebels main objective was to end colonial rule and establish a democratic government. Fidel Castro, the central leader and organizer of the revolution, initially did not Lee Lockwood Fidel Castro Cuban Revolution take a position in the new government.

Because the leaders of the Rebel Army and July 26 Movement were genuine democrats, they sought to implement their anti-imperialist democratic program after the old rulers and army were defeated.

The axis of their strategy was to appeal to the people and call on the toilers to defend and fight for their interests. They called for Cuba's complete national independence, breaking the political and economic control of U.S. imperialism.

Their democratic program called for sweeping land reform as well as providing housing, heath care, and education for working people. Plans for industrialization were also made.

Such democratic Rebel Army, (the old bourgeois army had been dismantled) backed by the workers and poor peasants, actea more and more as a "dual power" in relationship to the capitalist government.

Other steps were taken. Home and apartment rents were reduced by 30 to 50 percent. Taxes were reduced by two-thirds for most citizens. The books of major American companies were opened. These were companies that had paid little or no taxes previously.

These steps and others deepened conflicts between Fidel Castro's July 26 Movement and the coalition government. Imperialism stepped up its propaganda barrage against the revolution. Soon one by one the capitalist ministers resigned from their posts.

Real power was no longer in the coalition government's hands. By November 1959, revolutionary leader Che Guevara became head of the national bank and virtually all of the remaining capitalist figures had been removed from the government.

Workers' and Peasants'

Government The demise of the coalition government was a direct result of the actions taken by the July 26 leadership, who were backed by the masses.

This shift occurred in November 1959. It marked a qualitative change in the nature of the government. It was now a workers' and farmers' government where the ruling power was in the hands of the working people themselves.

The new government organized a peoples' militia of a quarter million people. While the capitalist class as a class had not yet been expropriated it had no political power.

A contradiction now existed: A government led by working people was in political power but the economy was still in the hands of native capitalists and their imperialist partners.

What followed is very important. The Castro leadership team was under tremendous pressure from imperialism to make concessions to the native capitalists if it wanted "peace." Liberals and others urged such a course. Washington began demagogically calling for "free elections." They never made such an appeal when Batista was in power.

Castro said the Cubans would never sell their soul to imperialism. They refused to bend. They looked to the masses as the best defense of the revolution.

After Washington cut the sugar quota in January 1960, Castro announced: "As they cut our sugar quota pound by pound, we will seize their mills one by one."

The revolutionary government passed a law authorizing the expropriation of U.S.owned property, saying compensation would (continued on next page)

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be paid out of future income from sugar sold to the United States.

When the U.S.- and British-owned oil refineries refused to process Soviet crude oil (after Cuba signed a trade agreement with the Soviet Union in February 1960), the workers intervened and opened the companies' books. Workers' control was established, a first step toward expropriation.

On August 6, 1960, Castro announced the nationalization of all the U.S.-owned sugar mills, oil refineries, the power and telephone companies. Major holdings of the Cuban capitalists were expropriated. Castro said: "We will nationalize them down to the nails of their shoes."

By October 1960 virtually every major capitalist holding had become public property. With the expropriations came state control over foreign trade and the expansion of economic planning. A workers' state had been born. It was the opening of the socialist revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Leadership decisive

These revolutionary steps were taken by a leadership with the support of the people. They were not administrative actions. Each expropriation and other acts were explained to the masses. The workers and peasants understood them. They were mobilized to carry them out and consolidate the political and economic expropriation of the old ruling class.

For the first time since the Russian Revolution a revolution succeeded because of' the actions of its leadership. (This stands in sharp contrast to the overturns of capitalism in Eastern Europe and China after World War II.)

Since that time the Castro team has supported revolutionary struggles abroad (for example, sending troops to fight the South African racists and sending doctors and healthcare workers throughout the Third World), understanding that it is their internationalist duty to do so.

The course Fidel Castro and the July 26 leaders took was not pre-ordained. It was not inevitable that a socialist revolution would occur. It was less likely in some ways considering the middle class origins of the leaders and the lack of a revolutionary workers' party in Cuba at the time Batista fled.

Their success was not because imperialism played soft ball. Washington organized the Bay of Pigs invasion and many times sought (and still does) the assassination of Castro and other leaders.

The U.S. government continues its economic blockade of Cuba. U.S. citizens cannot freely travel to or spend dollars in Why the revolution advanced toward socialism was because the leaders refused to compromise with imperialism. They sought to consistently implement their democratic program first proclaimed by Castro in the famous "History Will Absolve Me" speech published and circulated throughout Cuba while he was in prison after the attack on the Moncada army barracks on July 26, 1953.

When the native capitalist class and imperialism pushed for a retreat, the revolutionary leaders turned to the masses and pushed the revolution forward.

They rejected any version of "mixed economy" or a government of national unity that undermined the rule of the workers and poor peasants of Cuba.

They met each threat from imperialism with mass mobilizations and, ultimately, expropriation of the capitalist class.

It was this method of mass action based on the working people-which is in line with the basic views of Marx and Engels— that led to the first successful socialist revolution in the Americas.

The Sandinistas led the working people of Nicaragua against their Batista. They mobilized the people. They launched a major Cuban workers at a May Day rally in campaign that upgraded the life of the Nicaraguan peopie. They organized the military defeat of the contras.

But they "gave back" the chance to expropriate the economic power of the capitalists because of their mistaken policy of "mixed economy" which meant political compromise with the native capitalists.

The defeat of the anti-imperialist government could have been avoided as the lessons Lee Lockwood Havana in 1961 of the Cuban revolution show. The door was open to the socialist revolution.

The challenge for revolutionaries in Nicaragua is to draw the correct lessons from both the Russian and Cuban revolutions, as well as their own.

What's needed today in Nicaragua is the building of a revolutionary workers' party that can renew the battle against the capitalist class and fight for socialism.

ward full social liberation as well?

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mercenary army, the contras, with the aim of overthrowing the popular government.

was led by a revolutionary leadership based on the masses'