introduc- tion of market mechanisms is an in- or petty-bourgeois intent. In the early transitional period of a socialist regime the economic question is cru- cial hut not determinate; the question of who holds political power and how the popular majority in Nicaragua is represented through the National As- sembly and that the revolution is a pluralist revolation. Some delend this analysis by claiming that Nicaragua is a pluralist socialist democracy ill its carly stages, All parties have equal ac- cess to the media and have the right to arguc for their point of view. Thin ig- nores the fact that in Nicaragua one party has a monopoly of control of the state and the armcd forces which un- derpin it The police force is an ex- plicitly Sandinista police force and the army is explicitly a Sandinista army. Cuba.
SUPPLE Tell The evidence available over the The Sandinista leadership is in no ist leadership (There are Marxists, Christians, radical social demoorats: last year suggests that either of these sense a colerent rovolutionary marx- and radical nationalists in the FSEN scenarios are an arguahle possibility.
tatorship in 1979 was not a definitive chic revolution led by the united front of forces within the PSLN attached to and who is dominant is notal all clear). The overthrow of the old Somoza dic- socialist revolution, but an anti-olgur- mass organisations. The project of the Frente has been to hold that bloc
tional balance of forces alongside tie politically mixed nature of the Frente a workers' and farmers' claim that it is the people who hold prower in Nicaragua, it is in fact the FSLN and its armed wing which hold policy making processes, which have included incorporating the "patriotic bourgeoisie and other forces lostile tionary bioc. It is true that Nicaroguan society went through an exceptional together forces and developed a leadership of incredible breadth and These forces wer coherent chough under the leadership of the FLN to destroy the oligarchy and to lave some alternative anti imperialist vision of a just society of producers; but this did not, and does not. imply that the revolutionary socialist alter- native had or has hegemony within the It is this contradictory political reality that is reflected throughout the cconomy. politics and socicty in Nicaragua today and Icads to the con clusion that the international and ma- counter-revolutionary war and the leadership has produced in Nicaragua an extended period of what Trotsky believed would be an exceptional cir- goverment which bas still to make the definitive hreak towards the Will MacMahon SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 12 February 1989 development of baste consumption goods industries (and some capital goods industries] to encourage proletarianisation and the production of wage goods to eschuge With Lie Twn things are clear, The revalu- tiop of 1970 clearly deprived the hour- geoisie, and its allies of political power. Secondly while the FSLN the reins of the state muchine and revolutionary crisis which threw depth in opposition to the dictatorship. to it socialist project unto the revolu Sandinista soldiers: the army has been reconstructed socialist revolution. revolutionary bloc, The FSLN can no longer allow the the frce market and so-called liberated prices to do any more damage to the eliminate these seedbeds of capitalismi power and organisational will of the oppressed. This would imply, at a guarantees for the poor, eliminating the hig landowners that still exist and tuming their land over to the landless for the production of basic grins. This would counter supply problems if it were combined with an acceleration of the programme of shifting cotton production over to basic grain produc tion in the Pacific Coastal areas The massive investment given to Lie cor- ton bourgeoisie could then finance the instituling organs of class rule, This. would change the physiology of the Nicaraguan Revolution and Imply a definitive and qualitative growing over of the anti-imperialist, anti- oligaretuc revolution into a permanent It is in a strategy of this type that the of the FSLN in mobilise the workers and peasants in times of crisis has been reaffimed during the events that led up to the hurricane and the reconstruc- tion project that has followed it; but futher mobilisahons and qualitative advances can only be assured if the mass base of the FSLN do not suffer futher hardship at the hands of the poor and oppressed. They must before they climinate the political minimum, re-introducing food ward to the devclopment of a real rocialist democracy, It has also been mooted that the CDSsmay become in- purely local problems - they may stan to consider issues of universal inipor- These two developments would, in time, negate the role of the bourgenisic as a political and tance of the National Assembly while hope of the revplution lies, The ability struments for discussing more than cconomic force uni reduce the impor- revolution of a socialist characler. Freate's economic policy. Piere Assembly. There is no discussion of transfer of power from the Fronte to It is this next step forward which will be the qualitative break required may be reflected inside the Frente San- dinista itself. While not recognising ing revolutionary socialist in the FSLN, butlines such an approach in his book Democracia y Revolucion en las americas'. The strategy is to develop a Popular Assembly of Mass Organisations alongside the National how these two structures would seller and market vendor to so-called substantial demobilisation in iccent years that suggest a further break is most certain, the counter-revolution ment. The FSLN will have to depend on the self organisation and mass mobilisation of the most oppressed and those in whose historic interests a planned and socialised economy and society will operate. This will imply a the workers, poor peasantry and other oppressed layers via organs of socialist democracy of the type most appropriate to the