"The Fourth International places itself firmly on the side of the FSLN's battle to ensure the victory of the socialist revolution in Nicaragua.' THE debate in the Fourth International on the unfolding revolution. Welook at the leadership of this revolution -Government National [GRNN]; as well as the role of imperialism and the need for international solidarity.
It is not an abstroct discussion. We are concerned with very practical questions of how revolutionaries try to build socialism in other Latin American countries.
In order to understand the debate on the way forward in Nicaragua we have to make a distinction between strategy and tactics.
In imperialist and semi-colonial countries The Gains of the dynamic rules? the FSLN; the role of the Reconstruction process the crucial. uprising of of Civil Defence murderous National areas Somoza's fortified The the people in each function has been work, and vigilance the peasants al C built in every through the Federation. AMPROis continuing to youth are also of National Kremlin® of all Somocista education programme to eradicate sack any the National of the United of the FSLN the national poverty and Faction had the main organisation alike, history has shown that revolutionary crises pose the question of power; which class At a critical stage in this revolutionary question of government becomes Who forms the government? Is it s working class and based organisations of that class, or is it a bourgeois government based on the institutions of the bourgeois state?
The differences in the Fi do not focus on these fundamental questions of strategy, the need for a workers and peasants government conciliationist and that the government had been supported by the imperialists and bureaucracy because "counter-revolutionary" role.
Thesé three currents share a common method - that of abstract schemas. The fact that the FSLN led the revolution Somoza; carried through a radical programme, and fights continuously to organise the masses is overshadowed for them by the presence of the bourgeois ministers.
Of course we cannot support the presence of such forces in the government. The through of the revolution to its conclusion must at some point come into conflict with ine bourgeois ministers.
The FSLN does not use the presence of bourgeois figures in Communist Parties did in the Popular Fronts of the 1930s — to hold back the mobilisation of the masses. Far from it, the FSLN is leading the fight for self-organisation ot tne peasants, militias, women, and youth.
The OCI's description government's actions as ary. is no surprise. To this day they argue that Cuba remains a bourgeois state!
Just two months before the overthrow of Somoza, leaders of the LTT in Costa Rica wrote that: The class struggle is going through an acute downturn. however temporary'. and denounced the FSLN for launching another The same comrades, and the Bolshevik Faction, , claimed that the militias were being dissolved and the workers disarmed. In fact the FSLN was setting up an army trained in the use of rockets, tanks, and artillery, to guard against any Somocista attacks from Honduras.
Char trom dissolving the militias, on 9 October FSLN leader Tomas Borge announced 'the workers in the factories themselves will be of daya week'.
The Trotskyist against carrying centre of the same way as the 'counter-revolution- sharpest.
spelt OUL other neighbouring and class independence, but rather on tactical questions, assessment of the balance of class forces, the centrality of this or that slogan at any given time in the unfolding revolutionary These tactical questions are of course very important and at times crucial. But even a mass revolutionary party, with a large proletarian base, like the Bolsheviks, found it difficult to avoid making mistakes of this character.
The article printed below, "The gains of the toiling masses', summarises the positions of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
"The revolution has only just begun' we the militias. They will have their weapons'; they 'will of course be controlled by the workers who will also have military training at least one Bolshevik Faction, and Tendency, have called for removal of the bourgeois ministers, and for to constituent Concentration on removing ministers would be to completely mis-estimate the far reaching break that has taken place in terms of military power, the location of the real power,. the character OI government measures up to now, experiences necessary for the consciousness and organisation of the masses to develop.
The demand for a constituent assembly, also raised by the OCI, is to counter-pose bourgeois parliamentary institutions to the development and national centralisation of the organs of power of the masses, neighbourhood and union committees.
It is on the tasks of the Fourth International in Nicaragua that the differences have been The resolution of the United Secretariat that *the "reconstruction Nicaragua" in the interests of the workers and poor peasants makes it necessary to extend workers control of production; expropriate the imperialist banks and enterprises; repulse the artempts of the imperialist financial institutions to use the foreign debt as a means of pressure;
nationalise the remaining privately owned industries and large firms; and begin overall economic planning. Along this path, the system of captialist accumulation will be destroyed.
words, the tasks before the Nicaraguan masses and their leadership require resolutely continuing along the road opened twenty years ago by the Cuban revolution.
"Today, to prepare to carry out these tasks means strengthening all the organisations the outline the conference The revolutionaries, profound effect internationally biggest possible solidarity • strings and US hands off Nicaragua. toiling Leninist the assembly, ofrevolutionary Marxism the "The consolidation centralised workers, prolelaran parly such as the questions facing the revolution.
permanent revolution unfolds.
The idea that struggle of the Sandinista people'.
Many break with principle.
James P. Cannon, leader of the position adopted by the International Marxist Group World Congress unfolding revolutionary process in Nicaragua is not only rich in experience for all wild ve g on the class struggle The essential task for us now is building the and attempting to counteract the manoeuvres of imperialism. The central themes for a solidarity. movement must be aid to Nicaragua with no masses began building during their struggle against the dictatorship and in the first *By explaining its programme and ideas the Fourth International places itself firmly on the side of the FSLN's battle to ensure the victory of the socialist revolution. By acting as loyal militants in the framework of the organisation which led the overthrow of Somoza and leads this revolution, the members of the Fourth International in Nicaragua will defend the ideas of the gains of the toiling masses in a workers state based on soldiers, and peasants committees is intimately connected to progress in the construction of a revolutionary socialist within which the political vanguard of the Nicaraguan working class can debate out and decide the most important 'The character and history of the leadership of the FSLN as well as its role in the first phase of the revolution show that it would be an error to place any a priori limit beyond which decisive sectors of the FLN cannot go as the process of these positions are "liquidationist', as the Bolshevik Faction and LTT charge, is absurd. The Bolshevik Faction themselves operated in Nicaragua as the Simon Bolivar Brigade of the FSLN, whose stated 'only programmatic point' was, to support the Nor is the line for Trotskyists in Nicaragua • we need only recal American Trotskyists, describing their entry line into the Socialist Party, supported by Trotsky, in which they were forced to give up their paper. enter the Socialist Party as we are, with our