Goal of first-ever Sandinista congress: Capitalist stability

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Executive Committee of First Sandinista Congress in Managua, Nicaragua.

The first congress in the 30-year history of the Nicaraguan Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), held in Managua on July 19-21, marked its further consolidation as a pro-capitalist radical nationalist party committed to maintaining a social partnership (or concertación) with the government of President Violetta Chamorro.

Despite the extensive preparations for the congress, which is reported to have included debates among 47,000 FSLN members in 1374 regional assemblies, there was little opposition to the course projected by the eight-member National Directorate of the FSLN.

While many social advances were made in the early years of the revolution, the FSLN rejected the socialist option for Nicaragua and proceeded to confine the nation's development to the framework of a mixed, or capitalist economy.

The large majority of the land producing Nicaragua's cash crops remained in the hands of a tiny capitalist elite, and the independent mobilization of the working class, peasantry, and their respective FSLN-led mass organizations was frequently discouraged in favor of the interests of the "patriotic" capitalist sector.

These FSLN policies, the unremitting U.S.-sponsored economic and military assault, and the virtual cutoff of aid from the Stalinist governments combined to deny the Nicaraguan people the fruits of their revolutionary victory.

Virtually every FSLN leader addressing the 581 delegates at the congress based their remarks on the premise that Nicaragua's future was intimately tied to capitalist "stability," including a continuation of the International Monetary Fundtype austerity measures begun in the mid-1980s under the FSLN. Their occasional references to socialism were rhetorical in content and referenced to the distant future.

The "Declaration on National Stability, Peace and Reconciliation," which was passed nearly unanimously, blamed the accelerating economic crisis in Nicaragua on the "regrouping of the most extreme right-wing political sectors who, although a minority, are using their influential positions in the government in an attempt to revert the social transformations of the Revolution."

Excluded from this group of "rightists" was the actual government of Violetta Chamorro, whose representatives attended the congress as observers—assessing it as "positive, self-critical, and of importance to the entire nation."

Other than to call for a "national conference on the peasant problem, including the participation of all sectors," the congress offered no solutions to the mounting attacks of still-armed contra (or "recontra" bands, as they are now called) which have forced peasants off their land at gunpoint.

In relation to the Chamorro-sponsored moves to further erode the relatively insignificant Sandinista-created state sector of the economy, only "government incoherence in confiscation revision, and privatization policies" was noted. The FSLN offered no plan to mobilize Nicaragua's workers and peasants against these policies.

The repeated reference of Sandinista leaders to rebuilding FSLN support among the peasantry was a tragic admission that the FSLN-sponsored land reform had failed to satisfy the needs of tens of thousands of peasants. The now undeniable result has been to drive a not insignificant number of the country's most oppressed into the camp of the U.S.-sponsored contras.

Little aid from the Stalinists FSLN Commander Victor Tirado explained another congress theme that has gained general acceptance among the Sandinista leadership. "Experience shows us," he stated, "that people seek to destroy imperialism politically and economically when making national liberation revolutions. ... But revolutions of this kind cannot sustain themselves all alone; now there is nobody to subsidize them."

The idea here is that any advance in the direction of socialism (to the creation of a society based not on capitalist production for profit but on the democratic organization of society in the interests of the workers and peasants) is excluded without outside aid.

In reality, Nicaragua never received the aid it needed from the misnamed "Socialist Camp."

The aim of the token aid extended by the Soviet Union to Nicaragua was not to promote the advance of genuine socialism, but to increase the bargaining power of the Stalinist bureaucracy as it sought an accommodation with world imperialism. The condition set by imperialism for its half-hearted promise of future aid to the crumbling Stalinist economies, was a cessation of all support to national liberation struggles.

The remaining eight members of the National Directorate—plus two other top FSLN leaders, René Nunez and Sergio Ramírez—were elected as a slate with virtually no opposition. Attempts to add former FSLN Health Minister Dora María Téllez to the slate and to vote on each nomination separately to allow for expression of discontent with the policies of individual leaders were defeated with little opposition.

Lack of internal democracy Commander Tomas Borge summed up the agreement reached between the top FSLN officials on this point as follows:

"It's good to know that all the decisions made over these past years were made by this directorate. ... No one in particular can be blamed for the mistakes that were made. If anyone has to be blamed, it should be the directorate as a whole.' Borge's statement reveals perhaps more about FSLN functioning than was intended. In the 11 years of Sandinista rule, all party and state decisions concerning the fundamental course of the revolution were made by the nine-member National Directorate. During the entire course of the revolution, no decision-making institutions of the workers, peasants, women, youth, and soldiers were ever created.

The policies of the trade unions and peasant associations, including the right to strike, were in the province of the nine commanders, as was the FSLN-dominated National Assembly elected in 1984 by universal suffrage.

Inside the FSLN itself, democracy was totally absent. The party membership decided nothing. Its first national meeting in 30 years, consisted of only a handful of workers (3 percent) and peasants (10 percent). The congress elected a 98-member decision-making assembly, which is to meet every six months, and provided for a congress, which is scheduled to meet four years hence. Previously, all members of the assembly were appointed by the Directorate.

Despite the early egalitarian measures of the FLN which had undoubtedly won them mass support, the FSLN failed to involve the Nicaraguan workers and peasants themselves in the fundamental task of running society democratically. If this had been the policy of the FSLN, the result could only have been a massive and unprecented explosion of popular support for the revolutionary process-for the full, unimpeded distribution of the land, for the establishment of worker's and farmer's control over production to stop the capitalists from "decapitalizing."

A truly socialist-oriented Nicaragua would have inspired the oppressed everywhere with a living example that working people can rule in their own name, through their own institutions, and in their own class interests.

Such a Nicaragua would have been in the best position to appeal to the world's oppressed for aid and support—the admitted pre-condition for the establishment of genuine socialism.