Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 23:58:58 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: Nicaragua, socialism vs nationalism


>You(Hugh) wrote:
>>
>>The Nicaraguan party affiliating to the international tendency within
>which
>>the MAS was the biggest party, was indeed interested in ousting the
>>Sandinistas from power - as any Marxist socialist party would be that
>>didn't think a petty-bourgeois nationalist leadership such as the FSLN
>>capable of leading a revolution in a semi-colonial country to victory.
>
>    Carlos:
>
>    Sorry, Hugh, I need to correct you in this one.  The position of
>    the LIT(CI), MAS and the PRT(Nicaraguan party of the LI-CI) *was
>    not* "ousting the Sandinistas from power".  That, without a mass
>    revolutionary party to replace them would have been an
>    irresponsible act of "vanguardism".  The demands, at the time (1979
>    and 1980) of the LIT(CI) -- then called the Bolshevik Faction of
>    the Usec, by the way --, the PST (later the MAS) of Argentina and
>    the Nicaraguan PRT were: 1) FSLN: Break with the bourgeoisie and
>    form your own government; 2)Popular tribunals for all National
>    Guardsmen captured (the FSLN later *released* most of them who
>    in turn became the first bulk of the Contras) and 3) Nationalize
>    all industries and lands -- distribute them to poor peasants.
>    Additionally they demanded: 4) Expand the revolutionary upturn
>    to El Salvador and the rest of Central America and 5) For a
>    federation of a Socialist Central America with Cuba.
>
>    You may, as I do, disagree with some of these formulations, but
>    those were the one raised at the time.
>
>    Now, that strategy was designed to a)Explain and organize the
>    working class and the peasantry around transitional demands and
>    b) build an alternative revolutionary leadership.

Thanks again for filling in where I was a bit too elliptical and rhapsodic.

1. To fill in the links in my chain of thought concerning 'oust the FSLN':
you are obviously right about the adventurism of such a slogan without a
stronger mass revolutionary alternative. Later in my posting I made the
point about the creation of such an alternative being a major objective. I
should have made it clear that criticism of the FSLN in terms of power in
Nicaragua was propagandistic nationally. Only locally in favourable
conditions could it have had agitational force and had the potential to
gain mass local support.

2. Our differences over 'vanguardism' are terminological. I've tried to
explain what I mean by this in a posting to Louis P and later in the
posting you're replying to. The party is almost never in a position to be a
vanguard in its own right - a lack of clarity on the relations between the
party, the vanguard, the mass upswing and the need for organs of dual power
contributed very greatly to the crisis of the MAS in Argentina. I remember
a discussion my group had with LZ at the time when I found it necessary to
ask if the party had developed to such a degree that traditional organs of
dual power were no longer necessary in Argentina. He wasn't prepared to say
that it had, but I think there was a very strong unspoken desire for this
to be the case. When I've used 'vanguard party', I've intended it to mean a
party oriented towards the vanguard of those fighting in the class
struggle.

More later.

Cheers,

Hugh




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