What are some of the areas of Marxism that these revolutions enrich our understanding of? 1. The character of a revolutionary overturn. The Nicaraguan insurrectionary struggle is a clear example of how revolutions are the work of the masses and not of leaderships, however clever. Revolutionary leaderships respond to, learn from and seek to lead the revolutionary initiatives of the masses themselves. The principal Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. strategist of the 1979 insurrection, (FSLN) Commander Humberto Ortega, explained in an interview with how the FSLN didn't understand this fully at first, but corrected their approach in the heat of the struggle itself. On the July 1979 insurrection, he said:
"The truth is that we always took the masses into account, but more in terms of their supporting the guerrillas, so that the guerrillas as such could defeat the National Guard. This isn't what actually happened. What happened was that it was the guerrillas who provided support for the masses so that they could defeat the enemy by means of insurrection.
"I myself feel it is very difficult to take power without a creative combination of all forms of struggie wherever they can take place: countryside, city, town, neighbourhood, mountain etc., but always based on the idea that the mass movement is the focal point of the struggle and not the vanguard with the masses limited merely to supporting it."
The El Salvadoran revolutionaries felt this point to be so important that they incorporated it into the programme which is now the platform of the Revolutionary Democratic Front. They write: "The revolution that is on the march is not, nor can it be, the work of a group of conspirators. To the contrary, it is the fruit of the struggle of the entire people.."
The revolutionary leaderships of these countries emphasise that this point applies even more to consolidating the revolutionary power, and moving to the socialist transformation of society. Maurice Bishop of Grenada describes his government's aims as:
"First, the organisation and mobilisation of the masses. That is very key. To always try to fully involve the masses in whatever we are trying to do, to keep them fully involved, to ensure that they understand what the problems are and where we are trying to go."
And Commander Bayardo Arce of Nicaragua says:
"In the first place. revolutions are the work of the people, and cannot be viewed simply as the action of a government. This is a conviction of the Sandinistas."
When you stop to think about it, socialist revolution is not simply about the working class developing the economy - building hospitals, factories, roads etc - or of fighting for a bigger share of the cake. That is the role of the working class Sandinista National Liberation Front under capitalism as well.
The socialist revolution is the biggest organising drive in history. Chilean journalist, Martha Harnecker, It means raising the consciousness and organisation of the working class so that its collective will becomes the prevailing force in society.
Thus a key feature of the policies of the Sandinistas and the Grenadian New Jewel Movement in power has been the organisation of the workers and poor farmers, and the raising of their political and cultural level, so that they can make their social weight felt and begin to take on the tasks of running the country. Hence the revolutionary significance of the drives in Nicaragua and Grenada to organise the masses into unions and farmers organisations, into neighbourhood defence committees and militias, and of the campaigns to abolish illiteracy.
2. The decisive role of revolutionary leadership. While revolutionary struggle is not possible without the entry of the masses into the political arena, decisive to the successtul outcome of the struggle is correct and courageous leadership at the critical moment. Such leadership can only be won through the struggle itself. As Fidel put it in Managua:
"The Somoza dynasty tyrannised this country for nearly fifty years. But when the hour of freedom seemed most distant, there were men who thought, organised, and elaborated a strategy of struggle. Those men were the Sandinistas, the Sandinista Liberation Front.
"They elaborated a strategy, they elaborated tactics of struggle, and they went on perfecting them. They succeeded in pulling the entire people behind them. They are not the vanguard because they want to give themselves the title of vanguard. They are the vanguar ecause they learned how to wir for themselves the place of vanguard in the history and struggle of their people."
This can be seen in another way by contrasting events over the last couple of years in Grenada and up and eliminate their leadership, of armed revolutionaries stormed the army. ment was dismissed.
workers and farmers government was established that based itself firmly on the mobilisation of the masses.
Manley's People's National Party despite deep support for its antithrew down the gauntlet, he backialist-backed campaign of murder and economic sabotage, or to put for advancing the anti-imperialist ed the pro-imperialist Jamaica Labour Party to jack up an electoral victory, and chalk up an importthe world working class.
LENINIST PARTY NEEDED clearly putting forward the need for organised revolutionary leadership to be structured in a Leninist-type party around a scientific socialist programme, as the key to organising the working class and structuring a system of workers' democracy.
Borge of the FSLN, for instance, in drawing a balance sheet of the first year of the Sandinista revolution, said in a speech to the Third on September 13, 1980:
mocracy for the people....
"But to lead in the defence of these gains requires an organised vanguard of the people.... "Having completed in large part the organisation of the revolutionary state, the time has come to de. vote a large part of our best efforts to the development of the party of the revolution. pose to create an organised revolutionary party - guided by scientific principles... 'This party will be built in a democratic and critical spirit. must create an internationalist paraccount but that approaches them critically, testing out their effectcrete reality....
Borge said, "that it is the majority maintaining one's own viewpoints, it is necessary to submit to party discipline."
never forget their responsibility to stay closely linked to the masses, to the aspirations of the people; those who look to the workers as fish look to water....
The creation of such a party is "an historic obligation" Borge said. Bayardo Arce described this as of a revolutionary party" along "democratic centralist" principles. I would agree. ement in early 1979 that the Gairy regime was going to move to round ternationalism. they responded decisively. A force the military barracks and dispersed The repressive govern- key to its survival. The radio station was taken over and the masses called out to back the revolutionary overthrow and carry it through. A In contrast, in Jamaica, Michael government was ousted through a "ballot-box coup" in October 1980, imperialist measures among the Jamaican poor and youth. When imperialism and the Jamaican capitalists said "Enough!" to Manley and ed off. Manley refused to mobilise the masses in response to an imper3. The meaning of proletarian inFrom the beginning of the Cuban revolution the Fidelistsas have understood that extending their revolution was the Ever since, their policies have been shaped by this goal. It was epitomised by Che's death in Bolivia in 1967 where he was attempting to open a new revolutionary front to help take the pressure off Vietnam, under his revolutionary slogan of "Create two, three, many Vietnams!" Commander Henry Ruiz explained this internationalism in a speech to the July 19 Sandinista Youth assembly which I attended last October. It is necessary to build an e- tion. conomically strong Nicaragua, he explained, so it can be a bulwark of the Central American revolution. The Sandinistas know, he emphasised, that they cannot export their est possible example and be able to extend the maximum material solidarity to new revolutionary successes in the region, which he considered inevitable This is the policy that Cuba has been putting into practice all along Today, 50,000 Cuban docters, teachers, construction workers and technicians carry the example of the Cuban revolution throughout the Third World. Massive aid, including military aid, has been extended to Grenada and Nicaragua to help them secure their revolutions. And Cuban soldiers were decisive in defending liberation struggles in Angola and Ethiopia against imperialist-backed intervenHowever, Cuba does not try to use its aid, especially its military aid, to try to substitute for the maturing revolutionary consciousness of the masses of any other country.