The rise and fall of a "workers' and farmers' government"

Credit: Osopolar

"The Rise and Fall of the Nicaraguan Revolution" is an issue of the Marxist magazine "New International", published in 1994. It contains articles and resolutions by the U.S. Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) analyzing the victory, subsequent course and eventual fall of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. For most of the 1980's, the SWP were known as staunch defenders of the Sandinistas (the FSLN). However, they began criticizing the FSLN around 1989, arguing that the Sandinista front had become too moderate and accommodating to capitalism. While calling for a FSLN vote in the 1990 election, the SWP had given up hope for socialist change in Nicaragua, instead emphasizing Fidel Castro's Cuba.

As far as I know, the SWP analysis of Nicaragua is unique, at least among organizations with their origins in Trotskyism. The Fourth International seems to have continued supporting the Sandinistas even after their electoral defeat in 1990, while the more dogmatic Trotskyists (such as the notorious Simon Bolivar Brigade) had opposed the Sandinistas "from the left" ever since the revolution in 1979, arguing that the FSLN compromised too much with the liberal and conservative groups in Nicaragua. By contrast, the SWP strongly supported the Sandinista leadership, including the signing of the Esquipulas II agreement in 1987 (seen as a "sell out to imperialism" by the harder Trotskyists), becoming sharply critical only in 1989-90. I admit that I was surprised, due to the strongly pro-Sandinista flavour of this particular current! After all, the SWP had always condemned as "ultraleft" and "sectarian" those who refused to support the FSLN, and now they had (seemingly) ended up in the same camp themselves!

In retrospect, I think the SWP's position was logical. As already mentioned, they expected the Sandinista Front to lead a Cuban-style transformation of Nicaraguan society, if not immediately, then at least after a transitional period of nominal co-government or co-existence with liberals and moderates. That's how Castro did it in Cuba, after all. (A nefarious critic could call it "salami tactics"!) When it became clear that the FSLN wouldn't deliver, the SWP couldn't contain their disaffection. Indeed, the SWP seems to have been just as dogmatic as the orthodox Trotskyists, but in a very different political direction. Around the time "The Rise and Fall of the Nicaraguan Revolution" was published, they had actually began to promote North Korea (!) as an alternative alongside Cuba.

The main theoretical concept used by the SWP in analyzing the Nicaraguan revolution is "the workers' and farmers' government", a transitional, anti-capitalist government that is neither capitalist nor yet fully socialist. By its very nature, this transitional regime can move both backwards and forwards. In Cuba, it moved "forwards" and eventually turned the country into a "workers' state", i.e. abolished capitalism completely in favour of a planned economy, etc. This happened when Castro removed the liberal elements, and officially declared his regime Marxist-Leninist. In Algeria, the transitional regime of Ben Bella went "backwards" and was eventually overthrown by Boumedienne, whom the SWP regards as "capitalist". In Grenada, a similar transitional regime headed by Maurice Bishop was overthrown by Bernard Coard (a "Stalinist" in SWP's terminology), with Coard in his turn being overthrown by U.S. troops invading the island. In Nicaragua, the FSLN-dominated regime was a "workers' and farmers' government" suffering a peaceful electoral defeat in 1990. This issue of "New International" doesn't contain a closer theoretical analysis of the concept, but I think it's obvious that "the workers' and farmers' government" is a pretty elastic category. For instance, why wasn't Coard's coup against Bishop a step forwards, towards a "workers' state"? Coard was a more dogmatic Marxist than Bishop, and might very well have abolished capitalism on Grenada! Why doesn't the SWP define present-day Venezuela as a "workers' and farmers' government"? Why is North Korea - which has the strictest planned economy in the world - still a "workers' and farmers' government"? What on earth is the North Korean regime transitioning towards?

Still, SWP's theories saved them from the embarrassment suffered by the Fourth International, which had declared Sandinista Nicaragua to be an actual "workers' state" (like Lenin's Soviet Russia!), only to see this workers' state be peacefully abolished by an electoral defeat in 1990.

With that, I close this admittedly somewhat "esoteric" review.