The overthrow of Somoza in the Nicaraguan revolution opened a new chapter in the history of Central America. In a new book Nicaragua: The Sandinist Revolution Henri Weber examines the Nicaraguan revolution in detail. Below, with the kind permission of New Left Books, we reproduce a short excerpt from the book's fourth chapter, The Transition to Socialism.
At first sight, the government established in Managua on 20 July 1979 seemed to hold out every guarantee to the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie and its international allies.
The Government of National Reconstruction and the staff of the various ministries included a great number of reputable figures: Roberto Mayorga Cortes, former general secretary of the Central American Common Market and now minister of planning; Noel Rivas Gasteasoro, ex-president of the Chamber of Commerce, a prominent member of the Conservative Party, and minister of industry; Manuel José Torres, a big Christian Democrat landowner now presiding over the destinies of agriculture; and Bernardino Larios, a former colonel of the National Guard involved in a murky coup affair in 1978, who was of course minister of defence. A newly-adopted Code of the Rights and Safeguards of Nicaraguan Citizens was not a whit inferior to the Code of the Swiss Confederation. And the 'Fundamental Law of the State', a preconstitutional document, was inspired by principles dear to the founding fathers of North American democracy. FSLN representatives held only three of the eighteen ministerial posts, and the June 1979 agreements between the various resistance groups envisaged that they would also be a small minority in the future Council of State.
In reality, of course, both executive and legislative power resided in the Government Junta of National Reconstruction (JGRN), where the FSLN had an effective majority despite the presence of Violetta Chamorro and Alfonso Robelo, since Sergio Ramirez, a 39-year old writer and doctor in law, representing the 'Group of Twelve', and Moises Hassan, a 38-year-old doctor in mathematics of Palestinian origin, representing the MPU, both fully supported the positions of the FSLN. However, it was anticipated that general elections, due as soon as possible, would allow the situation to be normalised.
A huge public sector was created. But JGRN Decree No.3 restricted nationalisations to the financial system, mining, and fisheries, as well as industrial, agricultural, and commercial enterprises belonging to Somozists. The private sector still largely held sway, and no fetters were placed on its activity, Indeed, the FSLN ordered all citizens to hand in the arms they had seized from the National Guard barracks in July, It was time for reconstruction.
Impressed by all these timely gestures, the Inter-American Development Bank granted Nicaragua a $500 million loan to be spread over three years, with $200 million available at one. The episcopal conference voiced its enthusiastic support, and exhorted all Christians to work hard, The Socialist International started collecting funds.
'Implacable in struggle, generous in victory': the FSLN seemed to be applying Sandino's motto to the letter, not only in its humane treatment of former Somozist guardsmen, but above all in its relations with the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie, which, rights and property guaranteed, was given a significant place in the state administration.
Indeed, so generous was the FSLN that there was reason to wonder whether history was about to play another of its tricks, whether the anti-Somozist bourgeoisie, which Carter had vainly tried to hoist into power, would eventually carry the day through the derailing of the Sandinist revolution. Once the initial euphoria had passed and the country began to confront its enormous difficulties, would not the anti-Somozist bourgeoisie gradually impose a Portuguese-type solution? Might it not superintend a modernisation of the Nicaraguan society and State within the orbit of North American imperialism, merely rationalising the model of neo-colonial development with its growing inequalities, its oppression of the masses, and its incapacity for nationally-centred growth?
Would this Castroist-led revolution, which had triumphed at the cost of untold suffering and sacrifice, be taken over, as had so often happened, by its age-old enemies and last-minute converts? [illegible]
A number of doctrinaire leftist currents, both in Nicaragua and abroad, did believe that this would happen, and they accused the FSLN of 'construction of a bourgeois society and state without Somoza'. Thus James Petras, who dubbed the Terceristas Social Democrats, went so far as to prophesy: 'Nevertheless, this regime will be unable to solve any of the fundamental problems of the masses, On the contrary, in order to curry favour with its outside benefactors, it will have to demobilise the masses, limit change, and demand sacrifices, while restructuring the old class society — thus provoking mass protest. In these circumstances, the petty-bourgeois regime will resort to the old ploy of attacking counter-revolutionary forces of the extreme right and left, But in effect this will be a transitional regime facilitating a drift to the right — in much the same way that the Soares regime in Portugal was used as a means of stopping the revolutionary drift to the left and eventually discarded for an outright rightist regime.'
More serious, and therefore more finely nuanced, was the position of Jorge G. Castaneda, a Mexican Marxist economist. In his view, the FSLN's conciliatory attitude to the capitalists would increasingly demobilise the masses and strengthen both the bourgeoisie and bourgeois pressure on the FSLN. Blinkered by an 'economistic' approach to the problems of transition, the Sandinistas were not paying sufficient attention to the existence of antagonistic classes. But as always, the class struggle would take its revenge on the FSLN itself, which would be shaken by 'a real class struggle between bourgeois and revolutionary tendencies'. 'We are not referring,' Castaneda made clear, 'either to the problem of the old tendencies within the Front, whose unity is by now firmly established, or to the fact that there are individuals of bourgeois origin in the Front... The point is that different political lines, representing antagonistic class interests, coexist within the Sandinist Front. And their coexistence is by no means peaceful: the two lines are irreconcilable; of necessity one must prevail over the other.' Unlike Petras, however, Castaneda was confident that the revolutionary wing would emerge victorious.
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International showed greater prudence and optimism in its declaration of October 1979: 'The nature and history of the FSLN leadership, as well as its role in the first phase of this revolution, show that it would be an error to draw an a priori limit beyond which decisive sectors of the FSLN cannot go as the process of permanent revolution unfolds.' The declaration characterised the situation in Nicaragua as a peculiar type of dual power: the FSLN controlled the coercive state apparatus, but the bourgeoisie retained considerable power in the economy and the state administration. Nevertheless, the United Secretariat went on: 'It is not the case that two centralised powers confront each other (as in the Russian Revolution, where there was a potential conflict between Kerensky's Provisional Government and the Soviets); and the final outcome will not be decided through a central confrontation between two powers. In Nicaragua, as in Cuba in 1959, "real power" is in the hands of the Sandinistas and if the process continues to follow the same dynamic, further political developments may well be a question more of form than of essential content.'
Now, even if we bear in mind the predominance of the private sector in the economy, this 'dual power' thesis has never seemed very convincing.
It correctly sought to emphasise the open-ended, contradictory character of the situation after July 1979. The bourgeoisie, it was said, retained such enormous power that it could halt the revolutionary process in its liberal-democratic phase, waiting, as in Portugal, for a strong-arm solution to ripen. And it was not certain that the FSLN would be prepared to counter bourgeois plans. The fate of the Nicaraguan revolution, then, was still an open matter. The bourgeois-democratic revolution might, as in Cuba, develop into a socialist revolution; or it might slide back in a neo-imperialist direction, as happened in Bolivia and Mexico. The compromise instituted after the victory over Somoza was highly unstable, and would inevitably lead to decisive class conflicts involving a redivision of power.
All these points are entirely relevant and have been confirmed in reality, Nonetheless, the concept of 'dual power' does not seem to me applicable to the political situation during the first year after July 1979. For this concept refers precisely to situations in which two independently organised class powers confront one and other: for example, the liberated against the occupied zones in China and Vietnam; or the federation of workers' councils against the Provisional Government resting on the Tsarist state apparatus in Russia between February and October 1917. Dual power appears at the climax of a revolution when an autonomous bourgeois power resting on a state apparatus and, in particular, an armed force, stands opposed to a working-class counter-power in the process of organisation and centralisation, If the bourgeois power is still imposingly strong despite the intensity of the crisis, this is precisely because it controls the old state apparatus, which, though shaken, has by no means collapsed. It is around this apparatus that the forces of reaction reorganise themselves. Destruction of this apparatus, above all its repressive bodies, is therefore a crucial task for the revolutionary movement. Unless it is achieved, there can be no revolutionary outcome to the situation of dual power.
Now, conditions in Nicaragua after 19 July 1979 were characterised by the actual destruction of the Somozist state apparatus — and not only its military-police component, Functionaries and administrative personnel with an uneasy conscience took flight as soon as the dictatorship collapsed, Those who had not fled in time took refuge in various embassies, and 919 of these obtained safe-conduct out of the country in February 1980, What remained, then, of this bourgeois 'second power', with no army, no police, no judicial apparatus, and no hierarchical body of functionaries? We must not confuse 'dual power' and the subordinate presence within the state of politically dominated classes.
The bourgeois-democratic state, for example, is not a monolithic instrument in the hands of the ruling class. The relationship of class forces is refracted within the state. The dominated classes, and non-hegemonic fractions of the ruling classes, also occupy positions within it, The bourgeois democratic state is not merely the object, but the actual terrain of the class struggle. Its class nature does not refer to complete and undivided service of the dominant fraction of the dominant class, but to the fact that this fraction and this class ocupy the strategic positions and real centres of power (which are not always designated as such), whereas the dominated classes occupy subaltern, mainly supervisory positions.
In Nicaragua, most strategic points were occupied by the Sandinists on 19 July, and other such positions — in the administration and the economic apparatus — were taken over a few months later. The real centre of political power, both legislative and executive, has always been the National Directorate of the FSLN. One would have to be more than naive, for example, to imagine that ex-colonel of the National Guard Bernardino Larios actually controlled the Sandinist People's Army — an army composed of former guerrillas and partly structured according to their record of service. This is not to say, however, that the bourgeoisie's trusted men were there merely for show. By no means were all their posts purely honorific. Indeed, they enabled them to exert pressure on the real centres of power, to drag their heels, to place a force of inertia in the path of the revolutionary process, and to serve as a Trojan horse for the counter-revolution. These posts did not, however, enable them to promote an independent policy in the service of bourgeois class interests, or to mobilise the apparatuses of power for the implementation of such a policy.
It is true that the private sector was far more important than the public sector, and that there was no juridical barrier to the accumulation of capital. But this did not make it a situation of 'dual power', [illegible] one, Conversely, the massive nationalisations and the existence of state [illegible] the decisive questions are: Who commands the state? What dynamic does the relationship of class forces set in motion? If state power is in the hands of revolutionaries, and if they base themselves on mass mobilisation in order to counter the logic of profit and tailor economic policy to the basic needs of working people, then it is of decisive significance that the private sector [illegible] dominant, the public [illegible] minority, position. For the dynamic thereby unleashed should soon reverse the relationship between the two.
There was no more a dual-power situation in the Nicaragua of 1979-80 than — to take the opposite case — there was in Germany and Austria in the twenties, when coalition governments were formed between bourgeois and Social Democratic parties, or in the France of 1945-47, with its Communist and Socialist ministers and its string of nationalisations.
Dual power — and to some extent even war communism — did arise in Nicaragua during the climactic insurrectionary phase of the revolution, Then, a workers' and peasants' counter-power, with its counter-administration (the CDCs), counter-justice and counter-army, really did stand opposed to the Somozist regime. And it emerged victorious after a bloody 45-day trial of strength. The ensuing revolutionary power, dominated by the FSLN, set itself the goal of a transition to socialism in Nicaragua — the complete recasting of the political system and mode of production. Such a regime is what revolutionary Marxists term a 'workers' and farmers' government.'