Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 23:55:30 -0800
From: iwp.ilo-AT-ix.netcom.com (CEP )
Subject: Re: The Nicaraguan working-class and socialism


You wrote: 
>
>Louis:
>Category     Govt    Employees of  Employees of  Total   Pct
>          Employees  Large/Medium  Small Firms            of
>                     Firms                             total
>
>Salaried     65.2    26.4             -          91.6   10.1
>
>Proletariat  73.1    108.4            -          181.5  20.0
>
>Semi-Prol.   68.0    79.0             82.0       229.0  25.2
>
>Sub-Prol.      -      -               192.9      192.9  21.2
>
>Total        206.3   213.8            274.9      695.0  76.5
>
>(Proletariat includes agricultural workers with permanent 
>employement. Semi-proletariat refers to self-employed 
>workers, artisans, etc. Sub-proletariat refers to domestic 
>workers, unemployed, etc.)
>
    Carlos:
    Your figures do not differ much from what I posted taking mine from
    raw memory (I estimated a 5%).  Was a posting in response to
    Adam precisely on this point.  I also added that, oppossed to       
    Russia, that had hundreds of *big* factories (Putilov had dozens
    of thousands -- think like 200,000 -- workers), Nicaragua have all
    small factories.

    However, your figures are from 1980.  In 1978-79 were sloghtly      
   larger.


    Louis:

>Socialism means the dictatorship of the proletariat. To call 
>for socialism in Nicaragua in 1980 without having examined 
>the class composition of the country is not the method of 
>Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.

    Carlos:

    Socialism is a system, the dictatorship of the proletariat is
    a regime and its for of government the workers and peasant's        
    government. Get your definitions straight, Louis/

    I never called for socialism in Nicaragua, I'm not that stupid.
    Socialism is not possible in one country, less in an small country
    as Nicaragua.  I did indicate my support for a workers and peasants
    government.  But maybe you are referring to the SWP (who said
    it was already a dictatorship of the proletariat and a workers      
    state) or somebody else, like the Spartacist who called for         
    "socialism now" in Nicaragua.

    Louis:

 When a country has a working-class 
>that is such a small minority of the population, the call 
>for it to rule society is not a call based on historical 
>materialism but on faith.

    Carlos:

    The Russian revolution was lead by the bolsheviks who commanded a
    majority over the proletariat (5 million strong) in a country of
    over 100 millions in 1917.  The 5 million figure included the       
    families of proletarians (pure proletarians, working in factories,
    were more or less 2 million -- Check Trotsky: "History of the
    Russian Revolution").  The proletariat was a minority, tiny, in
    respect to the peasantry.  That's why the formula of workers and
    peasant's fovernment: a dictatorship of the proletariat based
    on the support of the peasants.

    Louis:

>To put the problem of "socialist revolution" in Nicaragua in 
>proper perspective, let's compare Nicaragua and the USSR in 
>1921,

    Carlos:

    Again, clear your terminology.  Socialist Revolution is a method
    and a program, not an institution or a system or a regime.  Calling
    for socialist revolution in Nicaragua was linked to the method to
    compelte the necessary democratic task imposed by the anti-somoza
    revolution, which can only be fullfilled through the method and
    the program of the socialist revolution.  Quite different, indeed.

    The rest of your post is an argument against a ghost, nobody
    posed the tasks trat you described.

    Comradely,
    Carlos


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