Fitzroy Ambursley and Robin Cohen (eds): Crisis in the Caribbean, Heinemann, £6.95.
Ambursley and Cohen have done the whole left a service by drawing together a mass of factual information on the revolutionary process in the Caribbean and Central America. The core of the book is an analysis of that process, in essays by Cohen and Ambursley themselves, which confirm the essence of the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution. Ambursley and Cohen are concerned to show that there is no 'third way' — often called 'the non-capitalist path of development' — between socialist revolution and imperialist domination. Country by country the contributors prove their case.
Perhaps the foremost advocate of the 'non-capitalist road of development' in the region was the former prime minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley. Fitzroy Ambursley contributes what must be the definitive Marxist account of Manley's government from 1972 to 1980. The essay shows how the world economic recession in 1974-5 threw Manley's Peoples National Party government into crisis. The policy of limited reforms, within a framework of refusing to challenge imperialist economic domination of the country, led to an impasse.
The PNP government stood firmly by the principle of the 'mixed economy' — the continuance of capitalism — and failed to mobilise the people to challenge the multinationals' domination of the economy. Despite its friendship with Cuba and support for the MPLA in Angola, the PNP government was not in practice anti-imperialist. Eventually, in exchange for an IMF loan, Manley introduced a series of anti-working class measures, including a wage freeze. Ambursley concludes that the Manley regime was 'a belated experiment in bourgeois nationalist-populism' rather than classic social democracy. This is surely correct. Manley must be seen as one of a host of nationalist leaders in the post-war world who doubtless provoke and annoy imperialism, but are incapable of taking the struggle in a revolutionary direction. The present leaderships in Angola and Mozambique are in the same category.
The crucial essays in the volume are those by Weber, Dunkerley and Ambursley, analysing the problems of revolutionary transition in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Grenada. James Dunkerley directly confronts the problem of class alliances and revolutionary strategy in El Salvador. Concluding that there is no authentic 'national bourgeoisie', he estimates that the strategy followed for many years by the Salvadorean Communist Party, of popular fronts with the bourgeoisie, is wrong in principle and disastrous in practice. On the contrary, the fundamental axis of alliances for socialist revolution is that between the proletariat and the poor peasantry. Dunkerley relates this strategy to that of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Correctly he points out that while only a worker-poor peasant alliance can defeat imperialism, it would be quite wrong to expel all bourgeois forces from the FDR, which is at heart an anti-oligarchy, anti-imperialist alliance. Nonetheless Dunkerley insists that the Salvadorean CP, despite its participation in the FMLN, is still wedded to a popular frontist strategy. There are others in the FDR, for example Guillermo Ungo's MNR, which are also popular frontist. What unites them is that they want a democratic solution, without the overthrow of capitalism. In that lies a danger to the Salvadorean revolution. The project of the popular frontists is that of European imperialism and Mexico.
In my view Dunkerley is right to highlight these problems in the FDR. Often the political formulations of the anti-imperialist front are dangerously vague. Some of its leaders have explained the project they propose as having 'nothing to do with socialism'. But what Dunkerley fails to adequately stress is that so far the revolutionary forces inside the FDR are quasi-hegemonic. Marxists have always understood that the real programme of a movement is encapsulated in its concrete actions, not its theoretical and programmatic statements, important as those are. The FDR and the FMLN must be characterised as revolutionary primarily for their concrete actions, as well as for some of their programmatic statements.
In his second essay, Fitzroy Ambursley tackles the controversial question of Grenada. Taking issue with those who paint the New Jewel Movement government of Maurice Bishop as revolutionary Marxist, or a 'workers and peasants government', Ambursley insists that Grenada remains a dependent capitalist country. He characterises the NJM as a 'revolutionary petty bourgeois workers party', and the Grenadian revolution as, 'an interrupted popular revolution' of the same type as Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique. Whether or not he is right in these characterisations, there is no doubt that his essay is the first sustained and serious Marxist account of the Grenadian social formation and class structure. The crux of his argument is that the bloc of dominant classes in Grenada is a fusion of a landowning oligarchy and a comprador bourgeoisie with significant interests in tourism and real estate, and that the Bishop government has made no significant inroads into its power and domination. The taking of power by the NJM has not resulted in an overturn in the fundamental social relations, and the NJM's adhesion to the theory of 'non-capitalist development' legitimises this approach.
The real question, which in my opinion Fitzroy's piece tends to evade, is whether or not a country of just 110,000 people is capable of carrying through a socialist transition independently. Is it conceivable to make a complete break with the world market and imperialist domination outside of a 'socialist federation of the Caribbean'? Surely, only by allying itself with the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc could such a project be carried through. A Marxist critique of the NJM must provide decisive evidence that such an alternative is an immediate practical alternative, whether or not the Soviet Union is prepared to sanction such a move. There are no easy answers to this question.
Henri Weber's essay on Nicaragua condenses the theses of his book The Sandinist Revolution. Two questions primarily concern him — the problem of defeating the bourgeoisie and overturning capitalism, and the question of democracy. With partial and secondary criticisms, Weber suggests that the strategy pursued by the Sandinistas is essentially correct. What he describes as a special kind of 'NEP' — the continuance of a mixed economy and capitalist production — has [illegible] mobilisation. By contrast Dunkerley's essay on El Salvador suggests in passing that the Sandinistas are committed to the mixed economy as a principle, and implies that they will not carry through the process of socialist revolution.
Our assessment would be much closer to Weber's. The process of class polarisation is deepening in Nicaragua, and the FSLN is taking more and more radical steps. But we must also add, the question of the economic power of the bourgeoisie must at some stage be confronted before it becomes transformed into political power. You cannot have a workers and peasants government on the one hand, and capitalist production on the other, for an extended period. One or the other must eventually go. The Nicaraguan leaders talk both of 'socialism' and the 'mixed economy'. Dunkerley takes this ideological imprecision for good coin, believing the FSLN to be popular frontist. This is a sectarian and pessimistic account. We are sure that the Nicaraguan revolution will solve these contradictions in good time.
The other notable essay in the book is that by Jean-Pierre Beauvais, editor of the French Trotskyist weekly Rouge, on Cuba. Using a mass of statistical and factual information, he suggests that Cuba's major economic problem has been that of labour productivity. Instead of attempting to resolve this through an extension of workers democracy and workers control, he argues, the Cuban leadership has increasingly reverted to Soviet-style economic management and incentives. In essence, the essay stresses the profoundly negative impact of Cuba's dependence on the Soviet Union, which only workers democracy and an extension of the revolutionary process regionally can break.
Central America and the Caribbean are today the focus of some of the most important revolutionary battles being fought across the world. Solidarity with this revolutionary process is of course the first task of the left. Nonetheless, socialists must make a sober assessment of the leadership and strategy of the movements in the area. The essays in this book provide irrefutable evidence that these 'new leaderships' are by no means 'Caribbean Bolsheviks', but in the best of cases empirical revolutionaries with many limitations. Eulogy can never replace the stern test of Marxist analysis.
PHIL HEARSE is a member of the Editorial Board of Socialist Action.