It has been clear since mid-1977 that an upsurge in the mass movement is taking place in Nicaragua. Before this, it had been difficult to assess the process that was going on under the surface because of the press censorship and state-of-siege conditions (martial law and a state of siege remained in effect officially from December 28, 1974, to September 19, 1977). Open political activity was banned.
The activity of the masses took place under the cover of religious forms. Hundreds of seemingly purely Christian neighborhood associations and workers and peasants groups appeared. Inevitably, every one of these associations came to center all its activity around concrete economic demands. Clashes between the Guardia Nacional (National Guard, the Nicaraguan army) and groups organized around the parish churches became frequent occurrences.
At the end of 1977, the unions began to find themselves compelled to launch an extensive mobilization for a general increase in wages. At the same time, in the city of Managua, where the majority of the working class is concentrated, an explo sive mass mobilization developed around the problem of transportation.
When Managua was rebuilt after the earthquake [in 1972], a consequence was the development of big working-class neighborhoods many kilometers away from the industrial area. Conditions in these slums are subhuman.
The transportation companies became the special monopoly of the military chiefs and the regime's retainers. The cost of transportation is the highest in Central America. A skilled worker, living, say, in the OPEN neighborhood, where more than 40 percent of the workforce in Managua is clustered, has to lay out 15 percent of his income for transportation.
Moreover, 1978 began with a vast campaign denouncing the crimes of the regime. Members of more than 300 peasant families had disappeared after being arrested by the National Guard. These families began to demand that the government answer the question: "Where are our brothers and sisters?"
At the same time, the student movement and broad sections of workers were waging a strong campaign for better conditions for the political prisoners.
Against this whole panorama of struggles by students, workers, peasants, and the people in the neighborhoods, a spiraling series of scandals was touched off by the robbery, abuses, and crimes of the regime.
The murders of peasants continued. On December 26, a school teacher was murdered on a public bus by a National Guard patrol without the slightest pretext in front of hundreds of witnesses. This was no isolated incident. Such events are common.
Cases came to light of paper companies being set up by backers of the regime and collecting millions of Córdobas [7 Córdobas equal US$1] in government loans. But the partners in these companies have not been prosecuted. In this climate of unbridled corruption, even one of Somoza's banks was swindled out of several million Córdobas.
Il.
By the start of 1978, the conditions had been assembled for a powerful mass upsurge. The regime and the bourgeoisie understood this clearly and sought to defuse the coming explosion by promoting a kind of "dialogue" between the bourgeois opposition and the dictatorship. All this was seen as a long-term process that would pave the way for restructuring the state apparatus and eventually replacing Somoza.
The objective of the bourgeois opposition in any case was to eliminate both Somoza and the mass movement. More precisely they wanted to get rid of Somoza in order to be able to contain the rise of mass struggles, since the bloody dictatorship had become the most immediate and sharpest stimulus for these struggles.
However, in early 1978 the opposition sectors of the bourgeoisie did not aspire to anything more than a long-term process. They were disarmed in face of the dictatorship.
Some sections of the bourgeosie, on the other hand, had reached this position by a roundabout route. In October 1977, not all the bourgeois figures were so inclined to wait. When Somoza suddenly fell gravely ill, illusions were aroused that rapid changes were possible.
A group of personalities including bankers, landowners, university rectors, members of the clergy, and the intellectual "elite" opposed to Somoza-later known as the "Group of the Twelve"-formed the Movimiento Democrático Nacional (MDN-National Democratic Movement).
From its birth, this movement was closely linked to the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN-the Sandinista National Liberation Front). Its avowed political objective was to topple the dictatorship in a short period of time. Its strategy was to create a climate of chaos and political instability that would make it possible to bring together a coalition of bourgeois, military, and imperialist forces broad enough to force Somoza to withdraw from power.
The weapon this movement proposed to use to achieve its objectives was the FSLN. The guerrillas were to unleash a major offensive, attacking the barracks in the main cities and carrying out armed actions all across the country. The FSLN's small armed groups carried out operations in San Carlos, Masaya, and Granada. The result was one failure after another.
Despite the heroism displayed by the Sandinista fighters and the loss of many lives, they were unable to achieve their objectives. They stood alone facing the power of the state. Only the masses have the capacity to win in a confrontation with the regime's exceptionally powerful military forces.
The Sandinistas counted on a mass uprising being sparked by their actions. Nothing like that happened. The masses are hardly likely to take the initiative as a result of actions occurring outside the framework of the processes going on problems he people of organ immediate among the people, of their immediate
As 1978 began, the failure of the FSL offensive had become clear. The "Group of the Twelve" switched over to the propaganda level, denouncing the dialogue with Somoza, from which they found themselves excluded, as a "fraud." But they had little hope of changing the course of events.
I1I.
At the same time, the mass movement was continuing its silent course, attracting little attention but inexorably preparing to come to the front of the political stage. The murder of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro on January 10 served as a catalyst to release all the pent-up fury of the working masses. It touched off a spectacular mobilization, which began in a spontaneous way and without any revolutionary leadership.
While there was a powerful upsurge of economic struggles, in the more specially economic suruggles, in the more specially political arena, that is, as regards the question of who rules society, the masses were unable to find any organizational expression for their aspirations. No welldefined political mass movement against Somoza was able to develop and push aside the false solutions represented by the bourgeois opposition's proposal for a "dialogue" and the Group of Twelve's illusions about the possibility of achieving a putschist "short cut."
When Pedro Joaquín Chamorro was killed, the political association, the Unión Democrática de Liberación (UDEL— Democratic Union for Liberation) was in the midst of a campaign to put pressure on Somoza to accept a certain type of "dialogue" with the bourgeois opposition. (The UDEL includes the two public factions of the Partido Socialista Nicaragüense, the Nicaraguan CP.)
Chamorro's murder totally wiped out any credibility for a perspective of dialogue with the regime. The display of revolutionary spontaneity by the masses came at a time when they had no political perspectives of their own and when there were no recognized working-class leaderships independent of the bourgeoisie. The result was tragic. The masses unleashed an irresistible wave of fury without having freed themselves politically from illusions in one or another sector of the bourgeoisie.
Suddenly outbursts of violence became an everyday occurrence. Fires were set in hundreds of factories. Supermarkets were emptied. Clashes took place with the police, who were trying to keep to their barracks and let the storm of popular fury pass, since as irresistible and audacious as this wave of mass actions was, it was totally without political leadership.
The bourgeoisie found itself obliged to "break" with Somoza. At certain moments, even those political forces that collaborate most closely with the regime, such as the Conservative Party, the "official" opposition in the Legislative Assembly created by the regime itself, came to the "breaking point."
A few days after Chamorro's murder, on January 23, a "general strike" was called by the employers associations. The workers, who were paid in advance, were urged to stay at home. A general shutdown spread across the country. Terence Todman, U.S. undersecretary of state for Latin American affairs, had to cancel a trip to Nicaragua scheduled for January 25.
The bosses' lockout was aimed both against Somoza and the mass movement. The U.S. embassy became the center for exchanging ideas for meetings among the various groups of employers. The objective was to create the conditions for a peaceful transition to a new government. At the same time, they sought to give a bourgeois answer to the mass movement-by paralyzing it.
All possible formulas were examined and reexamined in those days when the people were waiting for something to happen and an ominous silence prevailed throughout the country. The groupings and cliques within the army were
"sounded out," and various combinations were proposed. But no solution was found.
In the meantime, the mass movement was beginning to become uncontainable. The lockout had to be ended because the lack of visible results spurred the combativity of the masses rather than keeping it in check. The streets began to fill in Managua, in Diriamba, in Matagalpa, León, Granada, and Masaya. Spontaneous demonstrations erupted everywhere.
The lockout had to be called off after two weeks without any result being achieved. However, at no point did the bourgeoisie lose the initiative. In one way or another, the most important leading groups in the workers movement had managed to completely cover up the class character of the crisis. Some collaborated with one sector of the bourgeoisie, others with other sectors of it. Both the Partido Socialista Nicaragüense and the FSLN left the political leadership and the program of the movement in bourgeois hands.
With the end of the lockout, a slight ebb set in, but it could only be temporary. None of the political problems had been solved. Even on the economic level, no solutions had been forthcoming; the immediate demands of the masses had not even partially been met.
Despite their bourgeois leadership, the masses emerged from the lockout with their combativity intact. They had not suffered a single major defeat. No decisive confrontation had taken place. In only a few weeks time, the army had to fight its way with fire and sword into the Indian quarter of Monimbó in Masaya and into Diriamba, where forms of independent mass organization had begun to appear for the first time. The Monimbó massacre! did not constitute a decisive defeat for the movement of the workers, peasants, and students.
The upsurge of the people's movement has not come to an end because it has not been defeated. Nor has there been any sand the wat change on the official political level. But the movement has not found the way forward either. The situation is heavy with the portent of more decisive confrontations, and the need for a revolutionary leadership becomes increasingly urgent.
IV.
The FSLN is a guerrilla organization founded in 1962 under the impact of the Cuban revolution and under the inspiration of the strategy of the guerrilla focus. In the years since its formation, the original leaders have been steadily lost. In November 1976, the regime murdered Carlos Fonseca Amador, the main leader and founder of the group, a national figure of great popularity and prestige.
Amador's death, after he had become isolated as a consequence of internal factional struggles, was the harshest blow for the FSLN. With his passing, the FSLN lost the figure with the greatest national reputation on the left. The only survivor of the generation that founded the FSLN is Tomás Borges, who is now in prison and in the greatest jeopardy.
By the end of 1975, the internal divisions in the front had culminated in the formation of two factions. Rank-and-file Sandinistas had begun to develop differences with the orientation of the leadership. These differences arose essentially among the exiled members. Once these views filtered back into Nicaragua and began to gain some ground among the ranks, a split occurred
The Tendencia Proletaria (Proletarian Tendency) arose and finally broke off all relations and collaboration with the rest of the front. Although it had a different line and represented only a small minority of the FSLN, which supposedly opposed the organization's "foquista," adventurist trajectory and tradition, the Tendencia Proletaria insisted on keeping the old name. It did this probably because it wanted to hang on to the prestige represented by these initials. But this did not help it clarify its own line.
Although it calls itself Marxist-Leninist and proletarian, as an organization the Tendencia Proletaria is very far from being a Leninist party. It holds no congresses and grants no right to organize tendencies within it, but it seems to have adopted the conscious aim of building a revolutionary party and carrying out a reorientation to mass work. Two key political positions divide it from the other section of the FSLN-the need for mass work and for class independence.
From the standpoint of the need for mass work, it criticizes the other section of the FSLN, which it calls the "Terceristas" (Thirdists). It derives this name from the analysis made by the national leadership of the front that the FSLN constitutes a third political force in the country, alongside the Somoza machine and the anti- Somoza bourgeoisie:
For the Marxist tendency in the FSLN, it flows from the capitalist character of Nicaraguan society that the fundamental conflict in the country is the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and its political system. The struggle of other classes has only a complementary and secondary importance. From this standpoint, the struggle put up by small groups of conspirators is not only outside the class struggle but generally conflicts with it. Under capitalism, class struggle is primarily the class struggle of the proletariat: it is not a struggle of isolated elements, a putsch, or a conspiracy.
"Tercerista" circle that has
However, for the emerged out of the political sorting out process that has been going on in the FSLN over the past year, the class struggle is the fight that it itself is carrying on behind the backs of the masses and independently of them. A millimeter of political deviation has stretched out into light years. For the "Terceristas," the national situation is dominated by isolated actions carried out by isolated individuals.?
The Tendencia Proletaria also criticizes the other faction's relations with the bourgeoisie:
In tailending the bourgeois democratic movement, the Partido Socialista Nicaragüense has in fact surrendered its political independence and turned over the leadership of its work to the bourgeoisie. It has dissolved itself into the movement led by the bourgeoisie, thereby losing any capacity to push the struggle beyond the narrow limits imposed by the interests of the exploiting classes. The adventurist actions carried out by the Tercerista faction of the FSLN in isolation from the masses do not help to strengthen the revolutionary movement; it is the bourgeoisie that profits from them, using them as a means of pressuring the dictatorship to grant concessions. The policy of the Terceristas, like that of the Partido Socialista, favors only the bourgeoisie and weakens the revolutionary struggle against the dietatorship?
Moreover, the Tendencia Proletaria advocates broad working-class unity against the dictatorship:
We must work tirelessly for the unity of all democratie and revolutionary organizations in a single people's front that will marshal all the energies of the people and direct them against our hated enemy. Such a front must also offer a concrete organizational alternative to the bourgeois front, enabling the people to wage their struggle independently of the bourgeoisie. This unity must be achieved around the revolutionary program of the proletariat.*
The programmatic axis of the Tendencia Proletaria's struggle seems to be correct.
Basically, what needs to be done is to strive resolutely to give impetus to the people's movement for democratic rights and to direct it along a course independent from the bourgeoisie toward an armed mass insurrection to overthrow the Somoza military dictatorship. The mass movement must be directed toward establishing a people's democratie regime that will make it possible for us to move forward toward socialism without stopping at bourgeois democracy.
Thus, the Tendencia Proletaria touches on the foundation stones on which a revolutionary leadership can be built. However, their proposals for translating their orientation into concrete work are not free from confusion.
With respect to mass work, the line of the Tendencia Proletaria seems rather contradictory. Before the bosses' lockout, it presented its task in the mass movement as follows:
a. To mobilize the masses resolutely to de-
NICARAGUAN DICTATOR SOMOZA
mand freedom of political and trade-union organization, to repel any attack by the dictatorship against any section of the people, to give effective support to any democratie demand directed against the dictatorship, and to strive to transform every specific conflict into a struggle by the entire people against the dictatorship. To utilize every means to give impetus to mass action in order to reinforce and radicalize the people's movement for democratic freedoms.
b. To form all sorts of democratic organizations uniting the workers and their allies in a concerted struggle against the dictatorship. We must promote the formation of unions; peasant leagues; professional associations; democratic organizations of workers, women, and youth; every kind of legal or illegal, open or clandestine organization. Without mass organizations, the revolutionary struggle against the dictatorship has no effective underpinning.®
However, the conditions during and after the lockout put the Tendencia Proletaria to a severe test. In these circumstances, when it sought concrete forms to express its organizational perspectives, its limitations were starkly revealed.
Only the organized violence of the masses can shatter the whole apparatus of oppression and murder that sustains the military dictatorship.
The masses themselves have fully understood the need for this, and in various places in the country Revolutionary People's Commandos have sprung up, which have immediately begun to combat the dictatorship with all the means at their disposal. These commandos have placed bombs in the homes of notorious watchdogs of the regime. They have set fire to small military installations and sabotaged transportation.
They defend demonstrations and other activities of the masses. They have destroyed various headquarters of the Somoza party, and so on. As the working masses organize in commando groups and give vent to their creative initiative, the level and scale of these actions is mounting day by day.?
The concrete form that has been chosen for mass organizations, then, is Revolutionary Commando Groups.
Every group of two, three, or four citizens ready to fight the dictatorship can form a commando group. Their age or sex is not important. All that matters is that they have an ardent desire to see our homeland free of Somoza's oppression so that we can build a democratic country in which the workers will be assured of a decent life. These commando groups must arm themselves with anything at hand or that they can get their hands on. Machetes, pistols, molotov cocktails-anything can be used to fight the enemy. Bombs can be made. A knife can serve as a means for getting a pistol, which in turn can serve as the means for getting a rifle."
Obviously, these positions do not differ much from those of the group they dubbed "Terceristas," which they at first subjected to criticism. In a certain way, however, the Tendencia Proletaria is conscious of carrying out a line not very different from the one they criticize. This is why they feel obligated to justify themselves ideologically, trying to present their slogans as a form of mass work and at the same time differentiating them from the line of the national leadership of the "Tercerista" FSLN:
We are not calling for small armed groups carrying out spectacular actions. We are calling for the entire working people, in accordance with the opportunities that exist, joining the revolutionary armed struggle. We are calling for unleashing an irresistible wave of people's violence everywhere and in every possible form, from throwing stones at armored vehicles to destroying military installations.
One day not far off these small commando groups that have begun to form and take up the fight will become a real people's army, an indestructible instrument of struggle to smash our hated enemy once and for all and guarantee the system of people's democracy that we must build on the ruins of the present regime.!°
Such confusion about the forms of mass work and organizing the people is not a new or isolated phenomenon in the Tendencia Proletaria. Ultraleftism was always present in its approach to mass work. When it criticized the spectacular actions of the "Terceristas," it did not attack the political line as such but the method and timing:
When the December 27, 1974, action was carried out, the crisis was not terribly deep, and neither the masses nor the vanguard were sufficiently prepared to undertake a resolute assault on the "enemy stronghold.""
And more recently, it wrote:
The great error of these compañeros, and what led them rapidly to political bankruptey, is their deepgoing lack of confidence in the revolutionary potential of the toiling classes in this country. They appear to be exalting the fighting capacity of our people when they say that the masses are anxious to hurl themselves into an insurrection. But in fact they are not. If that were so, they would have taken the trouble to organize the population in advance of the battles so that the masses would participate in them.!?
The Tendencia Proletaria shows an obvious lack of confidence in the capacity of the working class to fight by means of its traditional methods of struggle. They try to substitute for this by introducing new elements:
So, we see how what in former times was the Nicaraguan workers' most potent form of struggle has today come to have a very limited and always dubious effect. There seems definitely to be a need for combining with strikes other forms of struggle that can hit the bourgeoisie hard.
Other forms of applying pressure are needed that, combined with determined mass mobilizations and leaving a secondary role for legal struggles, can be focused precisely on the capitalists. We need effective means of pressure that will force the capitalists to make concessions to the workers movement. These methods will necessarily have to be more violent and tougher than the strikes themselves. They can go from preventing production by preventing the functioning of the machines to direct, special actions by the struggling masses against the forces of the bosses.. ..1a
On the question of class independence as well, we find that while the Tendencia Proletaria correctly criticizes the existing alliances with the bourgeoisie, its own proposals are not free from confusion. Let us look at its governmental formula, for example:
A people's government, including representatives of the workers, peasants, students, and progressive intellectuals, in which every democratic stratum of the population would have a right to representation.'
On January 27, 1978, the Tendencia Proletaria made the following appeal for unity against the dictatorship:
The Sandinista Front FSLN (Proletarian) calls on the workers and the entire people to organize
People's Struggle Committees in the centers of production and everywhere that there are workers and Nicaraguan patriots. These committees must mobilize the masses in a struggle for democratic and revolutionary objectives and impel this movement forward to overthrow the dictatorship. These committees must be instruments of the exploited and oppressed masses in their struggle for people's democracy. All must join together and work together to give impetus to the struggle and to assure its independence from the bourgeoisie. Uniting and organizing the workers are the axes of achieving a revolution. ary victory.
The FSLN (Proletarian), realizing that the unity of the democratic and progressive forces is the essential precondition now for carrying through this struggle to victory for the exploited masses, calls on the revolutionary and democratic organizations to join forces around the objectives we have laid out.!
This appeal includes a confused governmental formula:
... a democratic and revolutionary people's government in which every section of the working people would be assured representation corresponding to their weight in society.!
Here the Tendencia Proletaria poses the tasks much less clearly than when it talks about a socialist revolution without any capitalist stages. It is significant that this happens precisely when the general strike/ lockout was beginning to raise the question of power for the masses:
This government must be an instrument the workers can use to open up the channels of social progress and carry out social and economic transformations that will put us on the road to a society free from exploitation and oppression.!?
In any case, it is clear that the set of problems that the Tendencia Proletaria has taken up offers us a basis for common discussion and political clarification that revolutionary Marxists cannot fail to take advantage of.
The Tendencia Proletaria did not have a very great impact on the ranks of the FSLN itself. Although it tends to predominate in exile circles, it does not have much strength in Nicaragua. What forces it has are concentrated in circles of university and high-school students and in community work carried out jointly with a Christian organization, the MCR. It tends to exaggerate its own role in the events, and does so essentially for an audience outside Nicaragua:
... thousands and thousands of persons gathered along the Carretera
Norte. The total reached 10,000 persons. In reality, it was a small people's uprising [My emphasis—F.A.]. If we had had more organization, we could have extended it throughout the city and throughout the coun try. If we had had arms, we could easily have taken the National Guard barracks and the city.
To do this, we need to improve in two respectsorganization and arms.
The response of the National a w totally incapable of obscuring our gigantic victory [my emphasis—F.A.].!*
It is also possible that the Tendencia Proletaria's confusion reflects a lack of homogeneity in its ranks. In all probability there are some cadres in it who are quite close to revolutionary Marxist positions. Discussion with this tendency is all the more necessary to help firm up the progressive aspects of a line that comes close to the axes of a revolutionary policy, although in a confused way.
On the other hand, the faction of the FSLN that the Tendencia Proletaria calls the Terceristas is sticking strictly to a struggle to topple the dictatorship now. In proclaiming this objective, it joins with sectors of the bourgeoisie and calls for a Frente Amplio Antisomocista [Broad Front Against Somoza):
In the present political conjuncture, a tendency is arising in the private enterprise groups, embracing entrepreneurs, professionals, and executives. They are not trying to form a political party, but call themselves center-left supporters of civilian government. On a basis of trying to achieve political unity of all Nicaraguans, they are trying to provide a democratic way out of the present situation. We are referring to the recently constituted Movimiento Democrático Nacional. There is the group known as "The Twelve." Made up of professionals, intellectuals, businessmen, and clergy, it patriotically backs the people's struggle headed by the Sandinista Front....
The strategies of the people's forces headed by the Sandinista Front and of those other political forces converge on one immediate objectiveoverthrowing the Somoza dictatorship.
Let us note a factor that is quite new in the political history of Nicaragua-political forces representing strata other than the poor masses are rallying around the Sandinista Front.
It is at such a time that the FSLN's Minimum Program of Demands assumes vital importance. It is the only guide for uniting the revolutionary people's forces and the democratic bourgeois forces and directing them toward a revolutionary overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship. It is the only guide for directing these forces along the road that will lead to a democratic people's government, which will open the way for the development of the Sandinista People's Revolution....
Hence, to bring about the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in the immediate period ahead, involving in the fight all those forces concerned, what is needed is an alliance of these forces in a Broad Front Against Somoza based on these programmatic convergences and unity in action.1°
There is another tendency in the FSLN, which is called the Prolonged People's War group. Its main difference with the Terceristas is over their decision to escalate military activity in the immediate period ahead. It is now in a process of reconciliation with them. The development of the events in Nicaragua and the weakness of this tendency have led it to regard its differences as secondary and to work together with the others in a single centralized organization.
The FSLN is recognized and esteemed by the masses as the organization with the most prestige. There is no demonstration by the people in which the FLN is not talked about. Despite its weak ties with the mass organizations, and in contrast to both factions of the Partido Socialista Nicaragüense, the FSLN is the focus of the people's affections and the very symbol of the struggle against the dictatorship. It is for this reason that the political errors, wrong conceptions, and confusion present in the FSLN threaten to have disastrous effects for the mass movement itself.
In very short order, in the development of the events in the biggest mass upsurge in the history of the country, the FSLN and all its tendencies proved simply incapable of taking the leadership of the movement. The problem of revolutionary leadership is still to be resolved in Nicaragua.
V.
Somoza did not fall from power after a two-week lockout. Nor did any faction of the bourgeoisie get sufficient imperialist support to try to put over a new governmental formula. The upsurge of the mass movement itself made it extremely risky to try any new bourgeois alternative. The best guarantor of bourgeois interests for the immediate future continued to be the Somoza state apparatus. At the same time, Somozaism continues to be the factor creating the greatest social and political instability.
This contradiction is bringing about a clearer and clearer definition of the political camps. The crisis continues to develop without any major changes being made and without the most elementary political problems being solved. This in turn tends to both sharpen the crisis and to wear out the bourgeois alternatives, creating a situation in which the masses are more and more ready to assimilate class-struggle political lines and reject the alternatives involving collaboration with sections of the bourgeoisie.
At this point, the masses are spontaneously taking up the demands most directly linked to their own class interests. This is showing up in the day-to-day struggles. The essential problem is to build a party that can wage an effective struggle for the unity and class independence of the exploited sections of the population and focus all their demands around a formula for a workers government.
The economic crisis, which is widened by the bourgeoisie's natural fear of new down. turns, is a factor stimulating the combativ-
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ity of the masses. The aspirations of the workers and peasants center around the problems of land, housing, and political rights. They focus in an immediate and special way on the problems represented by the army, repression, and the political prisoners. At this time of relative ebb, people can still be mobilized in the fight for amnesty for the political prisoners.
With regard to the problem of Somoza's army, the left organizations have not always understood what kind of political line should be taken to further the internal breakdown of the National Guard. One thing should be clear-the workers movement needs a complete dismantling of the army. The parasitic apparatus of the National Guard largely intertwines with that of the state, and its destruction would mean that at the same time the bourgeois state would be stripped of its defenses and torn apart.
The National Guard must be smashed and disarmed. The central slogan for the sections of the army on which the mass movement has had an impact must be for them to take off their uniforms. The central slogan for the masses must be to disarm, immobilize, and dismantle the army.
Any confusion on this question could have disastrous consequences. This is true especially when in the near future the mass movement might be able, at least partially, to achieve these objectives leading to the destruction of the army.
In Nicaragua, the army is made up of volunteers, mostly peasants. Low pay is part of the system that "trains" the soldiers in extortion and crime as the means for richly supplementing their monthly salaries. After they leave the fulltime army, former soldiers remain in the civ- ¡ilian reserve and continue to enjoy numerous privileges and engage in extortion.
Revolutionists do not consider the police to be workers; the Nicaraguan army is a gigantic police and gangster apparatus. They are not workers. Their repressive activities do not represent a use of "labor power." For us, repression is not a job.
The Nicaraguan left has not been clear on this question. Often it has regarded the army as a section of oppressed toilers like other sectors of the working class and peasantry.
On December 27, 1974, the Sandinistas took a number of hostages. Among the demands for their release was an immediate increase in the pay of privates and noncommissioned officers in the National Guard.
In recent weeks, in the midst of an extraordinary mass upsuge, there were still sections of the left that thought that a fight for unionizing the National Guard would help to develop links between it and the people's movement.
This question offers the possibility for an instructive political debate. The Nicaraguan revolutionary Marxists will not fail to take advantage of it.
VI.
For some time, sections of the left in exile have been raising the slogan: "All Power to the Sandinista Front." The mass movement in Nicaragua has not yet reached the point of undertaking to build a power of its own. This failure is bound up with the illusions that exist among the masses, which have led them to place their confidence in sections of the bourgeoisie. But this has direct consequences for the movement. If the masses put their confidence in sections of the bourgeoisie, they disarm themselves politically and organizationally. The development of organs of power by the people's movement is linked to a political break with the bourgeoisie.
Revolutionists must propagandize for a workers and peasants government at every stage in the struggle. At the specific moments when organs of power appear, it is necessary to focus the attention of the masses on such concrete expressions of their independent power. Sometimes, organs of power do not appear but the masses identify their aspiration to take power with their political mass organizations. In this latter case, revolutionary propaganda and agitation must focus on the call for some kind of government by these working-class political organizations, independent of all sections of the bourgeoisie.
In the present circumstances, does the call for all power to the FSLN advance the revolutionary education of the masses? Despite all the popular sympathy the FSLN enjoys, it is far from being a mass organization. Moreover, owing to the political line of the Sandinistas themselves, the masses do not see the front as a workingclass organization. It is not the focus of their class aspirations for leadership in struggling against the bourgeoisie.
The Sandinista Front itself has a rather slight political weight, if we compare it for example with that wielded by the July 26 Movement in Cuba in 1959.
A general call for power to the front is a politically confused formula because it disregards the alliances that this organization has with sections of the bourgeoisie. If this aspect is ignored, the class character of the call for power to the front remains obscure.
One fact is clear: The bulk of the radicalized and politically committed vanguard in Nicaragua is either in the ranks of the front or sympathizes actively with it. In building the revolutionary party in Nicaragua, we cannot bypass this obvious fact. Dialogue and debate with the front are a necessary task in building the revolutionary party. But this task is not facilitated by fuzzing over our differences with the front or adapting opportunistically to it.
Another stumbling block for the progress of revolutionary Marxism would be adoption of a line that involved giving some political credit to the Tendencia Proletaria as opposed to the others. Unquestionably, the Tendencia Proletaria has a certain progressive aspect to it in its approach to the political problem of mass work. And revolutionary Marxists must strive to use this as a lever to bring them toward our positions.
However, the Tendencia Proletaria has its own kind of logical consistency, one that is not new to us. Its line is very similar to that of the ERP20 in Argentina. Experience has made abundantly clear the fatal limitations of such a policy and the dangers involved in making any concessions to the program, methods, and conceptions it implies.
The "Tercerista" faction of the Sandinista Front has the overwhelming majority of the fighters in Nicaragua. Its leadership is the one that has the greatest social
20. Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army), a guerrilla group claiming to have a revolutionary-Marxist program. It called for combining terrorism and mass struggle.- IP/I
prestige, and is the one that the masses have in mind when they shout "Long live the FSLN." There is no political justification for our giving more political credit to one faction than to the other.
Following the sort of general lines indicated will enable us to open up possibilities for dialogue, cooperation, and debate with both tendencies, as well as to help achieve political clarity in the discussion.
VIl.
A new specter threatening the movement of the oppressed is the terror of the ultraright. In recent weeks, several paramilitary groups have been organized. The best known of these is call the Mano Blanca (White Hand). Murders of political leaders have begun.
The Guatemalan experience shows that the terrorism of the right can take the lives of tens of thousands of persons. The inability of the state apparatus itself to carry out such a mass slaughter openly, in the urban areas at least, has led it to build up this "secret" arm, which is simply the military disguised in civilian clothes.
Nicaragua faces a long process of class struggle and confrontations, of insoluble political crises, palace intrigues, and internecine warfare among the military cliques and bourgeois factions. The aspirations of the masses can be achieved only through their own independent action.
Although the advance of the masses may be slowed by their political leaderships entering into coalitions and deals with sections of the bourgeoisie, the struggle for land, for decent housing, for democratic rights, and for breaking up the organized-crime network disguised in military uniforms will be with us until these problems are resolved.
Despite the smallness of their forces today, this long process of mass people's struggles looming up will give the Nicaraguan revolutionary Marxists of the Liga Marxista Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Marxist League) the chance to demonstrate to the masses their capacity to build a revolutionary leadership. The programmatic and political clarity of revolutionary Marxism gives the Nicaraguan Trotskyists an incomparable tool for responding effectively to the aspirations of the masses and to the crisis of revolutionary leadership from which the country suffers.
Notes
1. In late February, as many as 200 residents of the Monimbó quarter were gunned down by the National Guard during an anti-Somoza uprising.-IP/I
2. "Nuestro programa, una discusión necesaria," in issue No. 3, 1977, of Unidad Revolucionaria, p. 47.
3. "Situación actual y nuestras tareas," in issue No. 2, 1978, of Causa Sandinista, p. 3.
4. Causa Sandinista, No. 2, 1978, p. 4.
5. Causa Sandinista, No. 2, 1978, p. 4.
6. Causa Sandinista, No. 2, 1978, p. 4.
7. "La organización de combate de las masas." in Las enseñanzas de enero, April 1978, p. 14.
8. Las enseñanzas de enero, pp. 15-16.
9. Las enseñanzas de enero, p. 16.
10. Las enseñanzas de enero. p. 15
11. Unidad Revolucionaria, No. 1, January 1977, p. 27.
12. Causa Sandinista, No. 2, 1978, p. 7.
13. Unidad Revolucionaria, No. 3, p. 30.
14. Causa Sandinista, No. 2, 1978, p. 6.
15. Communiqué No. 6, published in Causa Sandinista. No. 2, 1978, p. 22.
16. Causa Sandinista, No. 2, 1978, p. 22.
17. Causa Sandinista, No. 2, 1978, p. 22.
18. Causa Sandinista, No. 2, 1978, p. 13.
19. "Sobre el Frente Amplio Antosomocista," in Lucha Sandinista, April 1978, p. 9.