Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 08:20:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: nicaragua


On Tue, 30 Apr 1996, James Miller wrote:
> 
>    It's true that Nicaragua was exhausted and battered, as Louis says.
> If it were not for this, it would have been a relatively simple matter
> for the Sandinistas to continue the revolutionary course upon which
> they had embarked. Thus I recognize that the FSLN leaders succumbed
> to very heavy pressure.
> 

Louis: You "recognize" that they succumbed to heavy pressure? Who cares! I 
was responding to Seigle's article who mentioned nothing of the sort. I 
wonder if there's anything to be gained with debating you on this list. I 
might as well go straight to the source from now on: the Militant or SWP 
documents. We debated for a month about Buchanan. You called him a 
fascist, which was the line of the Militant. I called him an ultrarightist. 
Then the Militant stopped calling him a fascist and started calling him an 
ultrarightist, whereupon you dropped the whole matter. Isn't the kind of 
"democratic centralism" you operate under inimical to the search for 
political clarity?

>    Every real revolution inspires millions of ordinary people to
> rise above their former humble roles in society, and take on
> new tasks. The Nicaraguan revolution was no exception. The

Louis: God, what stultifying platitudes.

> 
>    The question of the confiscation of land is one that, in my
> opinion, could have been handled very well by the FSLN, given
> their political knowledge and experience. The land reform cannot
> be envisioned as an across-the-board expropriation of all
> large landowners. The Nicaraguan experience in the early
> years of the revolution showed how land reform could be
> done. Expropriations were selective. It was not a question
> 

Louis: When expropriations took place in 1979, they involved Somoza's land. 
The next series of expropriations took place in 82-83 and were done 
according to strict laws with respect to how the land was being utilized. 
No farmer or rancher who was producing had to fear seizure by the state. 
What criteria would the FSLN have used in 1986? How people voted in the 
last election? The newspaper they subscribed to? Any land reform that 
would have taken place after the mid-80s would have put the Sandinistas 
into opposition not only with farmers and ranchers who did not support 
them, but members of the powerful pro-government UNAG, an association of 
ranchers. The trouble with gringos who give free advice to Nicaraguans is 
that they really don't think through the consequences of their advice. 
All they are really interested in is appearing r-r-revolutionary.

>    The answer to inflation in prices of basic goods was rationing.
> The rationing was implemented early in the revolution, and was
> very successful. This should have continued and deepened. The
> 

Louis: Is Jim Miller really this dense or am I missing something? THERE 
WAS NOTHING TO RATION. There were a shortage of commodities available to
the marketplace due to the disruptions of the contra war. A bag of rice 
that fed 3 families in 1980 would now have to feed 6 families. That was 
the problem. You can either ration the rice or allow the market to 
dictate the amount of rice people get. In either case, there would have 
been hunger and misery. Recommendations on economic solutions are easy for 
SWPers to make. They make them the same way children make trades with the 
baseball cards that come with their bubble-gum.

> 
>    Seigle did not say that "socialism was on the agenda" for
> Nicaragua, only that by fighting along a socialist course, the
> Nicaraguan people could have made progress toward that goal.
> 

Louis: Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what an atrocious sophistry.

>    Louis argues that Nicaragua could not have expected to
> receive Soviet aid. This is probable. But in 1989, it was not
> yet obvious what changes were taking place in the USSR.
> 

Louis: Miller doesn't have a clue, does he? The USSR specifically told 
Nicaragua in 1989 that it COULD NOT expect any aid in the future. They would 
have to fend for themselves. I pointed this out in my discussion of "Twilight 
Struggle". Miller must have missed this when he was off the net. I 
suppose the only way he can learn anything about Nicaraguan history is by 
reading my posts. He won't get anything from reading SWP documents.

>    With the disintegration of the Stalinist monolith, the working
> people of the world are in a better position to discover what
> communism is. The false communism of the Soviet regime has
> proved its bankruptcy in practice.

Louis: The "bankruptcy" of Soviet Stalinism kept Cuba afloat for decades. 
Now capitalist investors are nibbling at its flesh like vultures. 
Staliniphobes like the SWP and the DSA can't seem to put together a 
dialectical understanding of the former Soviet Union at all. This, no 
doubt, has a class basis. They are both petty-bourgeois formations.

> 
>    If anyone is interested in finding out more about the
> position of the SWP on Nicaragua, I recommend reading
> _New International_, No. 9, published by Pathfinder. This

Louis: One thing I left out of my last post is the absolutely grotesque 
remarks made by Larry Seigle to a gathering of the SWP faithful. In the 
discussion period after his report, some in the audience wondered what 
the status of the FSLN and the FMLN was? Were they still "sister" 
organizations of the SWP? Seigle pointed to the lapsed FSLN and said that 
it was at one point, but was no longer.  This feckless outfit of 500 windbags 
which has not led any mass struggle for 25 years thinks it is entitled 
to drop the FSLN a peg down in its revolutionary hierarchy. People like 
Tomas Borge spent years in Somoza's prisons, contracted leprosy when in the 
mountains, drank their own urine to survive, stood up to Somoza's bombing and 
then went on to win the allegiance of millions of people. Don't you dare 
have the audacity to rate the FSLN. You don't have the credentials and 
never will.


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