[The following is an interview with Michael Lowy, editor of the book Marxism in Latin America and a member of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International. It appeared in the October-November 1984 issue of Pensamiento Propio, a sociological journal published in Managua, Nicaragua. The translation from the Spanish is by Intercontinental Press.]
Question. Are divergent conceptions of what "democracy" means at the root of the confrontation between capitalism and socialism?
Answer. Democracy is part and parcel of the definition of what socialism is. I understand socialism to mean the self-emancipation of the workers, effective control by the workers over decisions and management in the social and political spheres. So I cannot visualize socialism without democracy. It is like saying capitalism without capital or feudalism without landed property. It has no meaning.
Q. However, there are ever stronger criticisms from the left of "actually existing socialism."
A. I don't believe that socialism exists anywhere. Socialism is a historic process. In the 20th century we are, in reality, witnessing a long historic process of transition to socialism. Various countries have carried out social revolutions, anti-imperialist revolutions. The beginning of this process of transition to socialism is a beginning with problems, contradictions, advances, set-backs, no?
Q. Is there a contradiction between the concept of "dictatorship of the proletariat" and socialist democracy as you conceive of it?
A. I don't think so. However, it has come to be understood that way. But as the term appears in Marx, no. For Marx, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the power exercised by the workers. And the example he gives, the example of the Paris Commune, is a classic example of workers democracy. It was the most democratic form of power possible.
This concept was formulated by Marx in opposition to Blanqui, who put forward the concept of a revolutionary dictatorship, a dictatorship of a small elite, a small vanguard of revolutionaries, who would take power in a kind of coup to liberate the people from above. So Marx, in a polemic against this, came up with the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the power of the whole class, which agrees with the idea of democracy. Rosa Luxemburg also put forward this concept. She represents the democratic current within European communism.
It seems to me that the negative image comes from the fact that authoritarian and bureaucratic forms, in some cases even totalitarian forms, of states in revolutionary transition have proclaimed themselves to be dictatorships of the proletariat. In addition, the very word itself is identified with military dictatorship, with Pinochet, with Somoza. In the best of cases with Stalin, Kim Il Sung.
Q. Ironically, the concept itself, and many times the form in which it is put into practice, comes much too close to what Marx criticized.
A. As a matter of fact, there is more of Blanqui than of Marx in the way in which it is being handled. For example, let's take the case of Poland, which is an extreme case, but one that reveals a bit of this logic. It is a bureaucratic state of socialist origin. There you can see how far the separation, the alienation, between the political system and the working people has gone. The two are in open confrontation. It is hard to see where the democracy or the socialism is: the workers are repressed because they want to take the economy into their hands.
Q. Revolutions have rejected formal democracy. However, the people's democracy proclaimed by the Grenada revolution was not able to incorporate the people into making the important decisions.
A. The problem is deeds. Concretely, what methods, what channels, what institutions of control exist that allow the mass of the people to control and participate in the economic and political decisions, in managing the life of the state?
This is what seems fundamental to me. And the example of Grenada is interesting. It is a historic experience that showed that in many circumstances democracy is not a luxury reserved for Europeans or for the bourgeoisie. Rather it is a life and death necessity for the revolution.
Q. Does formal democracy make it possible to establish these mechanisms of participation?
A. We must point to the importance of incorporating representative democracy, with all that involves in terms of forms of state organization, into the revolutionary practice of power. We should no longer counterpose direct democracy and people's democracy to representative democracy. It seems to me that we have to start thinking differently about the traditional approaches that rigidly counterposed these forms of democracy.
The Marxist-Leninist critique of parliamentary democracy is correct. That is to say, elections every four years are no guarantee of democracy. And we have proof of that in Latin America: elections with Batista, elections with Somoza,
But at the same time, it is necessary that there be representative structures — on a national level - as a result of pluralistic elections. Such elections permit a confrontation between different programs and political and social visions. Therefore, it is necessary to go beyond the limitations of representative democracy in order to make it one element of a much deeper democratic structure rooted in the working people. This structure must permit effective, daily participation in economic and political life through grassroots bodies like committees or councils - in Cuba they are called People's Power — in the final analysis the name makes little difference.
I would say, to coin a "formula," that socialist democracy contains all the gains of traditional bourgeois democracy and, in addition, a series of other democratic gains. So you don't lose anything. Rather you gain something new.
Q. Those who do not believe in the Nicaraguan revolution maintain that the FSLN is holding the elections for merely tactical reasons. Sometimes statements by the Sandinista leaders lend themselves to this interpretation.
A. In Nicaragua, we are witnessing a very interesting experience because it is the first attempt by a country in transition to socialism, a revolutionary state, to seek this linkage between more direct forms of people's democracy — Sandinista Defense Committees, militias, cooperatives - and representative democracy through elections.
I do not think that the elections in Nicaragua are solely the result of international pressure or something solely to legitimize the revolution, although they do serve that end as well.
They have a greater significance, which is that this is an occasion to go through an unprecedented experience. Nicaragua will prove that it is possible to hold democratic elections under very difficult circumstances, with aggression on the borders, with a dramatic economic crisis, with thousands of difficulties. And above all, to carry out these elections with very broad pluralism. If the pluralism is not greater than it is, that is because the parties of the bourgeoisie do not want to legitimize the revolution.
Any political force that wanted to could participate. Here there are various non-Marxist, non-Leninist, non-socialist, non-Sandinista groups carrying out their propaganda against the FSLN. I have seen the slogans painted on the walls. This is pluralism. No one can say that it is not a very concrete manifestation of democracy.
Q. In these five years, the FSLN has established its hegemony and controls the state. Do you think that totalitarian tendencies may have developed?
A. In any country in the world the party that is in power has instruments that facilitate its propaganda. This is normal. This does not prevent the government party from losing an election. But here in Nicaragua this is not going to happen because we are not simply dealing with a problem of government.
The FSLN will win not because it controls the press, the television, but rather because it is pushing forward a revolutionary process. I believe that these elections, moreover, will be very useful for the FSLN. Many Sandinista leaders have noted that this is an opportunity to learn to confront the opposition's arguments in open ideological struggle. And not only the opposition. It makes it possible to put behind us a period in which the Front was much more authoritarian toward the other left parties.
It is also an opportunity to deepen its dialogue with the people, to discuss with the broad masses.
A third important aspect is that the Front will know in greater detail the people's concrete problems, so it can revise some elements of its policies. This experience will create precedents.
Q. It takes away arguments from the dogmatists.
A. They will no longer be able to say that pluralism is not viable, that elections play the bourgeoisie's game, imperialism's game. Or that you cannot permit pluralism when there is the threat of aggression. It must be said that in a situation as grave as the one facing Nicaragua, even a bourgeois democratic country would have declared the state of emergency and instituted the censorship of the press. You cannot ask Nicaragua — a small country that experienced 50 years of Somozaism — to have a perfect socialist democracy.
Q. Are there expectations in Europe regarding the elections?
A. In the eyes of many people, what is taking place in Nicaragua is rehabilitating the very idea of socialism. After what happened in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, what happened in Kampuchea, it has left a bitter taste in people's mouths. There is a great deal of disillusionment, disappointment. Many people have gone over to liberalism, some to reaction, to anticommunism. Others have not, but have pulled back. What is happening in Nicaragua is one of the great hopes that can once again raise the banner of socialism, of the revolution. It is once again going to concretely identify democracy and socialism. This has a worldwide historic value.