The invasion of Grenada by US imperialism and the overthrow of its government demonstrated the determination of the Reagan administration to crush underfoot any regime that it sees as a threat to its hegemony in the region. For US imperialism the nationalist-led revolutions in Grenada (March 1979) and Nicaragua (July ’79) posed a serious threat to its interests in the area. Somoza and Gairy had been important as part of the whole semi-colonial system which allows the US to economically dominate and exploit Central America and the Caribbean. A whole network of dictatorships, whose armies, national guards, death squads and secret police were trained and financed by the CIA, deny to the populations of the region the most elementary democratic rights.
The destruction of two of these regimes threatened the whole system. After the overthrow of Somoza and Gairy, the Grenadian and Nicaraguan attempts to gain a degree of independence from US imperialism, to loosen the economic stranglehold of the US by seeking aid and investment from Europe as well as the Soviet Union and Cuba, were regarded as a direct threat to US economic interests. Their progressive social reforms in health, education and literacy etc., in an area of the world where corrupt dictatorships presiding over the direst poverty were the norm, threatened to spread these revolutions to neighbouring states. Their close economic and political ties with Cuba not only threatened to undermine Washington’s twenty-year-old blockade of that country, but posed the possibility of more countries attempting to take the ‘Cuban road’ out of the orbit of world imperialism. Even the mildly social democratic regime of Michael Manley’s PNP was considered an intolerable threat by the US ruling class in the wake of the revolutions in Grenada and Nicaragua. By October 1983, having sown the seeds of his own defeat through his government’s attacks on the working masses, Manley was brought down ‘democratically’ following a virtual economic blockade engineered by international financial institutions dominated by the United States.
Sandinistas and the New Jewel Movement
The revolutions in Nicaragua and Grenada were political rather than social revolutions. They remained revolutions which did not transcend bourgeois democratic limits or transform the property relations in these countries.
They were none the less genuine popular revolutions based on the workers and poor peasants and thus containing the fullest potential for social revolution. However, the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada (PRG) and the Government of National Reconstruction of Nicaragua (GNR) openly declared their commitment to maintaining a capitalist economy on achieving power. Both the Sandinistas (FSLN) and the New Jewel Movement formed coalitions with sectors of the bourgeoisie, instituting Popular Front governments.
Of course, these governments are not Popular Fronts in the ‘classical’ French and Spanish form experienced and analysed by Trotsky in the 1930s; that is, they are rarely formal blocs between clearly defined reformist workers’ parties (Stalinist and/or Social Democratic) and parties of the bourgeoisie. This lack of open and clear political demarcation and party division corresponds to the fluidity and relative lack of definition of class divisions in an underdeveloped or backward semi-colony; the ‘socialist’ rhetoric of petty-bourgeois nationalists and the chameleonism of the Stalinist currents within the guerrilla movements; and the absence of large bourgeois nationalist parties, given the weakness of the bourgeoisie and its comprador-like subordination to US imperialism.
All this produces an amorphous movement containing Stalinist and social democratic as well as petty-bourgeois and bourgeois nationalist currents or factions. This alliance itself has a popular-frontist political character, and when it attains power it constitutes a Popular Front Government—albeit that the formal class independence of the proletariat is dissolved within it and the alliance with the bourgeoisie may be with only a ‘shadow’ of it—that is, with an insignificant fraction or certain political representatives of the bourgeoisie.
From dual power to bonapartism
In both Grenada and Nicaragua the regimes of this type were inherently unstable. In the process of overthrowing their respective governments, the New Jewel Movement and the Sandinistas opened up a new period of dual power. Both revolutions fractured and disintegrated the armed state power on which bourgeois rule rested. On the one side stood the aroused movement of workers and peasants eager to throw off years of exploitation and oppression. On the other side stood the bourgeoisie backed by imperialism, deprived of direct control of its state—its repressive apparatus. Political power rested in the hands of the armed nationalist movements which had led the revolutions, the FSLN and the NJM. These were not ‘parties’ but rather coalitions of various political groupings and tendencies. The FSLN encompassed proto-Stalinists who identified with the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions (the Proletarian Tendency and the Prolonged People’s War Tendency) and a social democratic current around the Ortega brothers—the Terceristas, which had close links to the anti-Somoza bourgeoisie and sections of the Catholic church. The NJM contained a similar political spectrum with an organised minority around Bernard Coard, the OREL grouping, which had close links to the Stalinist Jamaican Workers’ Party.
What united these coalitions on coming to power, and enabled them to strike a governmental alliance with sections of the bourgeoisie, was their commonly held perspective that the next stage of the revolution was NOT to be an anti-capitalist one. This perspective necessitated the preservation of a ‘mixed economy’ (that is, a capitalist economy) and an alliance with the ‘anti-imperialist’ and ‘patriotic’ sectors of the bourgeoisie. The leaders of these movements sought to develop their economies by promoting a state capitalist sector; seeking loans from European imperialism (as well as the ‘non-aligned’ countries); and by welcoming financial and technical aid from the Soviet Bloc countries.
The commitment to defend capitalism, relegating the struggle for socialism to the distant future, necessarily brought these regimes into conflict with the immediate demands of the masses. The organs of popular mobilisation thrown up during the struggles against the US-backed regimes, and whose existence created dual-power situations, had to be disciplined and controlled, to be turned into powerless organs of ‘popular power’ which would serve as organs mobilising support for the FSLN or NJM leaders.
At the same time the bourgeoisie, with its indissoluble links with US and world imperialism, posed an ever-present threat in its attempts to reassert direct control over its state. Above all the bourgeoisie demanded unfettered control over its factories and farms and a complete demobilisation of the workers and peasants. Terrified of the threat of the aroused masses, it sought by all means to achieve a compromise with US imperialism.
It was the prolonged existence of this dual power situation (albeit in an attenuated form now in Nicaragua) which gave these regimes their specific left-Bonapartist character, balancing between the masses on the one hand and the bourgeoisie on the other. However, there should be no confusion as to the class character of these governments. Despite their socialist and populist colouring they were constructed as BOURGEOIS governments, committed to defending capitalist property relations.
United States intervention
The last period of Carter’s term in office marked a decisive shift in US ruling class strategy following the fall of the US’s most trusted agent in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran. In Central America and the Caribbean this expressed itself in a determination to ‘roll back’ the revolutions in Grenada and Nicaragua, to destabilise the Manley government in Jamaica and crush the revolutionary movements in El Salvador and the rest of Central America. The Reagan administration’s tactics have followed a well-worn path. It has applied economic sanctions and blockades through its domination of the international aid bodies, with the aim of undermining popular support for these governments which it intends to overthrow. It has made full use of its internal allies—the landed oligarchy, the bourgeoisie and the church—to destabilise these regimes. It has financed and organised external counter-revolutionaries in economic sabotage and military interventions. It has promoted the organisation of regional military blocs (CONDECA, OECS) tied to the US military and designed for interventions against revolutionary movements. And finally, it has resorted to direct military intervention by US forces, in Grenada.
European imperialism
The current strategy of the Reagan administration has opened up a number of tactical differences between the USA and the European imperialists in Latin America. While the European imperialists also clearly recognise the danger to their economic interests posed by the revolutionary situation in Central America, they also understand their opportunities. Michael Manley in Jamaica, Maurice Bishop in Grenada and sections of the FSLN all looked to the ‘progressive sections’ of the European bourgeoisie to aid them in their struggle with Washington. Thus their close links with the social democratic and Labour parties in Europe. Fearful of Reagan’s policies producing a repetition of Cuba and driving these countries into the arms of the Soviet Union, the Europeans prefer to aim for a democratic counter-revolution in these countries, on the Portuguese model. They have encouraged regimes such as the PRG of Grenada when in power, and the GNR of Nicaragua, to agree to ‘free elections’, to steer clear of aid from the Soviet Bloc and to retain the mixed economy. In return they have offered aid and the use of their good offices to stay the hand of Washington. Despite the verbal differences that this has led to between the European and US bourgeoisie, the European powers clearly recognise their SUBORDINATE position, both economically and militarily, in these regions. As a result their promises of substantial aid have remained on paper and none of them has shown any willingness to seriously challenge Reagan’s policies. As in the case of Grenada, they will continue to recognise the real relationship of forces in the region and, in the end, acquiesce to US strategy.
Fatal weakness
The defeat of the Grenadian revolution, as previously with the ousting of Manley’s party in Jamaica, showed the fatal weaknesses of social democratic and Stalinist strategies in the imperialised world. The attempt to preserve the ‘mixed economy’, that is a capitalist-dominated economy, while seeking to promote a state capitalist sector through loans from European imperialism and the non-capitalist countries, has been proved bankrupt.
The European imperialists have shown themselves no more ‘philanthropic’ with aid than the US, while the Soviet Union has been less than open-handed. The result: in Grenada before the invasion, and in Nicaragua today—a growing economic crisis as social reforms have to be increasingly financed out of internal revenue or borrowing. The massive foreign debt repayments and economic blockading measures exacerbate these problems and ensure economic stagnation in the long term.
The defeat in Grenada
In Grenada, a tiny island chronically dependent on the world imperialist market, the PRG’s utopian economic strategy rapidly ran into severe problems, provoking a dramatic political crisis in the regime. The Popular Revolutionary Government of Grenada was formed as a Popular Front involving important sections of the island’s capitalist class alongside the NJM, which itself contained Social Democratic and Stalinist wings. This Bonapartist regime, which balanced between the bourgeoisie and the worker and peasant masses, was by mid-1983 becoming increasingly isolated. Having failed to satisfy the crucial demands of the masses for land, for permanent employment or for control over the capitalists, the regime was severely weakened. Its organs of ‘popular power’, Parish and Zonal Councils, developed on the Cuban model, gave the masses no control over the government or any real decision-making power. These powerless consultative bodies were increasingly boycotted by the masses. The NJM, which had never held a congress since the overthrow of Gairy, remained a tiny grouping of no more than three hundred members which was dependent for popular support on its populist figurehead, Maurice Bishop. The political disputes within the NJM between its two wings were fought out behind the backs of the masses and the party membership. The settling of these disputes via an army-led coup and the killing of Bishop and his supporters in the government provided the excuse for the US invasion and the guarantee of its success. The masses were politically demoralised, while the militia had been disarmed because of its ‘unreliability’.
Reagan targets Nicaragua
Having achieved ‘success’ in strangling the anti-imperialist movement in Grenada, the Reagan government is proceeding apace to achieve the same objective in Nicaragua. The economic blockade has been tightened to the point where basic necessities are now in short supply. ‘Contra’ attacks and economic sabotage have been stepped up dramatically, while internally the bourgeoisie maintains its sabotaging techniques and a boycott of investment. A large US fleet hovers off the Nicaraguan coast, practising the invasion of Nicaragua with its newly reactivated CONDECA alliance (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador). The Church has recently moved openly to the fore in the organisation of the counter-revolution inside Nicaragua.
For the USA, the task of overthrowing the GNR in Nicaragua grows ever more urgent. The collapse and demoralisation of the El Salvadorean army is developing apace. The desperation of the El Salvadorean ruling class is expressed in its stepping up of indiscriminate terror through its ‘death squads’. Washington must quickly strike a decisive blow at Nicaragua if it is to stem the tide of revolt in Central America.
The GNR of Nicaragua remains caught in the contradictions of its long term policy of coexistence with Nicaraguan capital. Like its overthrown counterpart in Grenada, the GNR was a Popular Front alliance between the FSLN coalition and the bourgeoisie. After four years of pressure and subversion by US imperialism, the vast majority of the bourgeoisie has defected to the camp of the counter-revolution. The FSLN is left preserving the Popular Front with the ‘phantom’ of the bourgeoisie, but nevertheless remains committed to its part of the ‘bargain’; namely, to preserve the private sector and to try to reach a compromise with US imperialism.
This policy will lead to disaster for the masses. The bourgeoisie is enabled to continue its economic sabotage: payments on the debts to imperialism now run at 45% of Nicaragua’s export income. The resultant economic crisis provides fertile ground for the arguments of the counter-revolution within the masses.
The Bonapartist nature of the FSLN regime results in a complete lack of workers’ democracy in Nicaragua. As was the case in Grenada, the masses have no organs through which they can exert direct control over government or the economy. The 135 municipal juntas, as well as the Council of State, are appointed, not elected. In the CST (Sandinista Trade Union Organisation) appointment from above is the norm, as it is in the other ‘mass organisations’. The CDSs, the AREs (Economic Reactivation Assemblies), the cabildos abiertos (discussion meetings) etc. have no real executive power but are classic organs of plebiscitary democracy where the masses are asked to contribute their opinions to decisions taken from above. The parish and zonal councils in Grenada were bodies of a similar character.
The debate going on within the FSLN on how to respond to the present crisis takes place not within the ‘mass organisations’ or organs of ‘popular power’ but within a tiny circle of ‘commandantes of the revolution’ and ministers of the government. The offensive of US imperialism has posed point blank the utopian nature of the programme of the GNR. To continue their present course invites growing economic disintegration, a ‘Contra’ invasion backed by CONDECA and US forces, leading to the establishment of a ‘provisional government’ and the start of a civil war internally as the bourgeoisie and the Church mobilise for the counter-revolution.
Alternatives for the FSLN
Two options are posed to the FSLN leaders as a means of escaping this ever-worsening crisis. Firstly, they can compromise with imperialism. In practice, little short of outright capitulation and the imposition of a regime that is totally subservient to the US ruling class will satisfy the Reagan administration.
For sections of the FSLN the option of breaking completely from the world imperialist system is undoubtedly preferable. The bureaucratic overturn carried out by Castro in the face of intolerable imperialist pressure, would be the model to be emulated. Such a course of action depends heavily on the willingness of the Soviet Bloc to underwrite such a regime both politically and economically. All the evidence suggests that neither the Soviet Union nor Cuba is willing to encourage such a course. Cuba has consistently encouraged a ‘cautious approach’ both in Nicaragua and with the Bishop regime in Grenada, advocating the ‘mixed economy’ and the maintenance of links with imperialism for aid and trade. Castro’s support for Bishop and his condemnation of the Austin–Coard coup reflected this policy. His open admission that Cuban military assistance would not be forthcoming to Nicaragua if it faced a US invasion, was a further reminder to the FSLN to seek a compromise rather than a confrontation with US imperialism.
However, whilst the ruling bureaucracies of the Stalinist states seek to avoid confrontation with imperialism by systematically restricting struggles for national liberation within bourgeois limits, their wishes are not an all-powerful historical law. It takes two to make such a bargain. If imperialism remorselessly seeks the destruction of Stalinist-led or Stalinist-influenced forces, the latter may, having first assured the survival of the proletarian dictatorship or the proletarian vanguard, take steps to expropriate the bourgeoisie. The more such a party or forces are materially dependent on, or ideologically subservient to, Moscow (or Havana) the less likely are they to take this leap.
Just as the Castroites moved forward to ensure their own survival, against the wishes of both Moscow and the Cuban Stalinists, so sections of the FSLN could attempt to present the USSR and Cuba with a fait accompli. To let such a regime go down to a dramatic counter-revolutionary intervention would be a fantastic blow to the Soviet Bloc’s influence amongst the anti-imperialist movements and would weaken its own position vis-à-vis US imperialism.
It is clear from the present course of the GNR of Nicaragua that at the moment those in favour of the first option dominate within the FSLN and the government. While having few illusions of being able to stay the hand of the dominant hardline faction of the US ruling class, the GNR has taken a series of measures designed to appease European imperialism and, they hope, even sections of the US ruling class aligned behind the Democratic Party.
The FSLN leadership places great hopes in a Democratic victory in the US elections. It believes that this would be less dangerous for Nicaragua than the present Reagan administration, demonstrating again that the present strategy of the FSLN provides no alternative but the illusory hope of peaceful coexistence with imperialism. The measures they have taken include the removal of El Salvadorean guerrilla headquarters from Managua, the scaling down of the numbers of Cuban advisors in the country, an amnesty for almost all those who have taken up arms against the Nicaraguan government, together with a promise to return all farms seized in response to counter-revolutionary activity or else to give compensation; and the lifting of censorship on the right wing newspaper La Prensa. Most importantly these measures included the decision to hold elections to a Constituent Assembly in November 1984 and the lifting of restrictions on opposition parties’ activities introduced under the 1982 State of Emergency.
The Constituent Assembly
As long as the major provisional tasks remain unfulfilled within Nicaragua and as long as Nicaragua remains a capitalist state, the slogan of a revolutionary Constituent Assembly remains applicable. In Nicaragua the left-Bonapartist GNR regime has denied the masses this democratic right, counterposing to it their bureaucratically dominated and powerless organs of ‘Popular Power’.
In 1979 we raised the demand for elections to a Constituent Assembly following the fall of Somoza, not in counterposition to the fight for worker and peasant councils, soviets, the building of which remains the fundamental and strategic task of revolutionaries, but as part of the struggle to overcome the democratic illusions of the masses. In contrast, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI—in Ireland PD), who previously denounced this demand as playing into the hands of the ‘bourgeois democratic counter-revolution’, now dance to the tune of the latest twist of the FSLN leadership in endorsing ‘free elections’ uncritically. Unlike the USFI we place no reliance on would-be Bonapartes to safeguard the democratic rights of the masses, a position which leaves the workers and peasants to be mobilised by the bourgeoisie posing as the ‘real’ defender of democratic rights.
But neither do we fall in behind the method by which the bourgeoisie wishes to convene, and thereby dominate, such an assembly. Communists support the convening of a Constituent Assembly through methods which allow the greatest degree of self-organisation of the masses. They fight for the most democratic franchise possible, for the secret ballot, for votes at 16 years, proportional representation, no financial restrictions on candidates, annual elections. They place at the centre of the campaign for a Constituent Assembly the revolutionary tasks necessary for the liberation of the masses from the yoke of imperialism:
- For an agrarian revolution, based on peasant committees, which breaks the power of the oligarchy and big farmers—’land to the tiller’.
- For the cancellation of the debts owed to the imperialist powers through their banks and agencies.
- For the nationalisation of the banks without compensation under workers’ control.
- Open the books of the capitalists to workers’ inspection, establish workers’ control of production and distribution.
The fight for these demands, of course, is not left to the ballot box but is primarily directed to the struggle for workers’ and peasants’ councils to achieve these demands. In this way democratic and transitional slogans are used to mobilise the masses for power.
Permanent revolution
For revolutionaries this is the only perspective which offers a serious possibility for defending and extending the gains of the Nicaraguan revolution—the perspective of permanent revolution. The present course of the FSLN leadership threatens disaster for the workers and peasants of Nicaragua. The response of US imperialism to the latest FSLN proposals has been predictable—it is stepping up its counter-revolutionary offensive.
We reject the utopian notion that an alliance can be made with ‘patriotic sections’ of capital against imperialism. In Nicaragua the defence of the revolution means above all breaking the economic and political power of the bourgeoisie. It means expropriating the saboteurs and establishing full workers’ control over production. It means establishing democratic control in the militia and army—the election of officers and commanders. It means transforming or replacing the powerless organs of Bonapartist ‘people’s power’ with genuine organs of proletarian democracy—workers’ and peasants’ councils. It means establishing a real Workers and Peasants Government, in place of the popular front Government of National Reconstruction. Above all, the defence and extension of the Nicaraguan revolution means full military and economic aid to the FMLN insurgents and the other anti-imperialist movements in Central America as part of the fight for a Socialist Federation of Central America.
The present offensive by US imperialism in Central America and the Caribbean calls for the utmost organisation of solidarity with movements struggling against imperialism. Extending and organising solidarity actions in no way means extending uncritical political support to these movements. In the imperialist heartlands the labour movements must be mobilised to block and disrupt any actions by their own governments aimed at facilitating the overthrow of the GNR or the suppression of the FMLN.
- Forward to a Socialist Federation of Central America!
- All US and East Caribbean troops out of Grenada!
- Immediate and untrammelled self-determination for the Grenadian people!
- Defend Nicaragua and Cuba against imperialist aggression!
- For workers’ power in Grenada and Nicaragua!
- Victory to the FMLN against imperialism and its stooges in El Salvador!
