The Central American revolution

I. The context and the imperialist escalation

1) A QUARTER of a century ago, the victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba heralded a new stage of the world revolution. A first breach was opened in the American empire. The seizure of power by the New Jewel Movement and the establishment of a revolutionary government (March 1979) in Grenada opened up a new breach. Grenada forms a revolutionary link between the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking parts of the Caribbean basin region.[1] The revolutionary seizure of power in July 1979 by the FSLN in Nicaragua inaugurated a further stage of the prolonged revolutionary process developing in this strategically decisive region for the United States. The overthrow of Somoza represented a defeat for the American presence that had hidden behind the National Guard and Somoza dictatorship for so long. Today the revolution in El Salvador is the sharpest expression of the class confrontations in the region. The other revolutionary and mass struggles underway in Central America (mainly in Guatemala) and the Caribbean (Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica) are also unfolding within this dynamic of radical challenge to the US system of rule and of extension of the socialist revolution.

The geo-political framework profoundly influences all aspects of the Central American revolution. The revolution developed in countries strictly subordinated to imperialism where the political regimes were "created" by the United States. The states that have emerged from victorious socialist revolutions — like Cuba and Nicaragua — are the first authentically national and independent states crystallising the historical aspirations for self-determination of these oppressed nations and the demands of the exploited masses. These revolutions come up against the imperialist counter-revolution in this United States security zone. This explains the present central role of the Central American revolution in the class struggles on an international scale.

2) There are few regions which have been so much the object of the foreign policy of an imperialist power as Central America and the Caribbean. It has been the theatre for permanent United States intervention for 85 years. The United States has always claimed the right to dictate its law there. It considers this whole region to be an integral part of its "defence system", and has 40 to 50 military bases there. It is building new ones — among others in the Honduran part of the Gulf of Fonseca between Nicaragua and El Salvador. In 1982-83 20 per cent of the entire US military budget was earmarked for this region.

This zone is a major communications and trade route, as well as a transhipment and refining site for oil shipped from Alaska and the Middle East to the United States. It is a very important trading lane for both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts (Panama Canal). It bristles with top-ranked, off-shore financial havens (Panama, Cayman Islands, Bahamas).

It contains oil, gas, and other raw material reserves.

The Reagan plan for the "Caribbean Basin" — in which the United States is included! — aims to use it as a location for implanting industries avid for cheap labour. Washington and Wall Street would like to impose on an even greater scale a Puerto Rico-style model of development! A hundred important firms are co-ordinated in the "Caribbean Central American Action" — a body led by D. Rockefeller which gives total support to Reagan's policy. However direct imperialist economic interests (investment) are relatively limited compared to its military-strategic interests.

American imperialism demands "absolute hegemony" in this part of the world with the accord of the imperialist bourgeoisies. Keeping this intact and allowing no sharing of its supremacy is a test of its international credibility. The present revolutionary upsurge threatens the American empire in its "own" backyard. Also, the problems of the "backyard" are in the process of becoming domestic problems — if only because 10 per cent of the region's population live in the United States.

The power of attraction of the Nicaraguan revolution, coming after the Cuban, is based among other factors on the fact that it shows it is possible to defeat American supremacy head-on in one of the regions closest to the imperial metropolis. Better still, despite all the difficulties caused by the Pentagon, these revolutions, sustained by popular mobilisation, have been able to rapidly begin to respond to the basic needs of the majority of the people. An economic disaster is hitting the Southern Cone countries hard — the impoverishment of very broad layers of the population is accelerating. All this contributes to closer links between the class struggles in South America and the Central American revolution, which increases the stakes involved in the ongoing confrontations.

3) The new rise of the revolution in the Caribbean Basin is taking place — as opposed to the period of the Cuban revolution — when American imperialism is undergoing a prolonged economic crisis and its hegemony is in decline. A decline sharply revealed by the defeat suffered in Vietnam and the overthrow of one of its strategic allies, the Shah of Iran. So the Central American revolution became the target of a large-scale imperialist counter-offensive. The counter attack underway since the July 1979 victory of the FSLN is one facet of a global policy: brutal attacks on workers' living standards in the United States: breath-taking re-militarisation and stepped-up pressure against the Soviet Union; strengthening of military intervention capacity aimed at hitting back hard against attempted revolutionary breakthroughs in the dominated countries; and finally the economies of the latter are placed under tight IMF surveillance.

In fact Carter had begun this policy of crisis and war. The Democratic Party administration had a series of failures when it attempted to set up a regime without Somoza but based on his National Guard. It attempted to get the Organisation of American States (OAS) to back a direct counter-revolutionary intervention, in order to get broader support in the United States and internationally. The OAS refused this, for the first time.

Imperialism quickly drew the lessons of this experience. It gave increased importance to regional military sub-alliances.

As early as autumn 1979, Carter orchestrated Romero's coup d'etat in El Salvador, stepped up military aid to Honduras and El Salvador and prepared the conditions which were to turn Honduras and Costa Rica into future bases of intervention against the Nicaraguan revolution, ensured the survival and training of Somoza's National Guard, reinforced the presence of marines in the area and directed the overthrow of Manley in Jamaica although masking the operation through the elections. Threats against Cuba increased.

Since 1980-81 the Pentagon's war drive has been continually stepped up. It has the following features:

a) A reorganisation of the Salvadoran police and army (the latter being placed under the tutelage of the American military high command). The involvement of US "advisors" is getting greater and greater — in terms of information gathering, air-surveillance, maintenance of sophisticated military equipment and also in commanding military operations in the field. Without the aid, training and structuring provided by the United States, the Salvadoran army would have certainly suffered a collapse under the effects of the FMLN military offensives.

b) The increase in the number of joint military exercises between the United States, Honduras and El Salvador. These manoeuvres are organised in the Gulf of Fonseca, Honduras (on the Nicaraguan-El Salvador frontier) and also some certainly take place in Salvadoran territory. These military exercises serve to force regional miltiary alliances — a necessary condition for the direct use of American forces in greater number. Their importance is due to the failure of the imperialist plan to "Latin Americanise" the war in Central America. This project was to be based on armies like that of Argentina. But it broke up due to two factors — the Malvinas war and the crisis of the Southern Cone dictatorships. During the counter-revolutionary intervention in Grenada the United States inaugurated the use of these regional military sub-alliances. As it happened this also made it impossible for a new "watchdog" force to be established in the region.

c) Honduras has been transformed into a real American "aircraft carrier". More than 2,000 soldiers are permanently stationed there excluding the CIA personnel who organise the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary forces. The Palmerola base — equipped for all types of military aircraft, is the strategic centre of the United States war operation. Ten military airports complete Honduras' "defence system". A training centre for Salvadoran and Honduran troops, with a capacity for 1,500 soldiers has been functioning since 1983. Finally a system of radar surveillance, necessary for carrying out both aerial offensives against Nicaragua and permanent air reconnaissance has been set up.

The heavy American influence is provoking a process of decomposition and corruption within the power structures. The combined effect of this heavy influence, the danger of a war that is rejected by the masses and the economic crisis, are provoking reactions among the population. But it is difficult for these to find an independent political expression, given the weakness of the revolutionary political forces. Conflicts are emerging between sections of the regime and the military hierarchy, which itself is not free from internal conflicts. The presence of several armies (from the contras to American troops, not forgetting the Salvadoran troops trained in Honduras), is another destabilising factor. The leading circles in the army are totally dependent on the United States, but are keen on negotiating aid in their own interests. They are also concerned to maintain a position of strength vis-a-vis the other armies in the region, such as that of Salvador.

In the next period the American imperialists will try to strengthen their military position in Costa Rica.

d) A fully-fledged counter-revolutionary army based in Costa Rica and Honduras is financed, trained and staffed by the CIA. It is 15,000 strong with a solid component of ex-Somozista National Guards. These mercenaries have launched an all-out war against Nicaragua causing them great human and financial costs.

e) In the Caribbean sea the American fleet is on constant patrol and organises bigger military exericses (Ocean Venture). A reorganisation of the police and military in the Caribbean states is underway. A multinational military force has been established (Dominica, Antigua, St. Lucia, and Barbados) to prevent any "new Grenadas".

f) Washington relies on Israel to expand its war effort in the region. The Zionist state plays a frontline role in the arming and training of repressive forces in Guatemala. It is a prime supplier of modern arms to the dictators of the region. Its advisors operate in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and among the contras. Taiwan also participates in these counter-revolutionary operations by financing the anti-Sandinistas and by arming and training the armed forces in Guatemala.

g) The occupation of Grenada by American troops was to show the revolutionary movements of the region — as well as US allies — what Washington's real objectives are. It also demonstrated that, faced with a deployment of US air/naval forces, revolutionary fighters should not expect aid of an equivalent kind. Fidel Castro correctly stressed that to deter such aggression and — if need be — to resist it, unfolding revolutions have to draw strength from the level of mobilisation, the preparation of the masses and the revolutionary forces, and the quality of their leadership. This can raise to the maximum the price imperialism would have to pay for such action and could facilitate a certain aid from the revolutionary forces of the region. The course of the Grenadian revolution made that impossible.

h) Since 1981, the Reagan administration has worked out a doctrine based on hackneyed formulas designed to legitimise direct large-scale intervention domestically and internationally. It alleges in the first place that the United State must stand up to the USSR in Central America; next, that the FMLN only exists because it is propped up by the Cuban-Soviet alliance via Nicaragua, thereby casting El Salvador as the victim of a foreign aggression; and finally, that the fall of El Salvador would pave the way for "Russian penetration" in Guatemala and then Mexico. Faced with this danger, the United States has a duty to fight "Russian expansionism". It portrays American policy in this part of the world as just one element of the "East-West" conflict.

Reagan's and the Pentagon's diplomatic manoeuvers fit in with this schema. Their objectives are domestic and international, as well as having a direct effect on ongoing battles in Central America. As is the tradition, American imperialism puts together elections and tries to brush up democratic appearances in El Salvador and Guatemala, for instance. Such moves are designed to legitimise stepped up military aid or direct intervention for the "safeguarding of democracy". They also represent a last-gasp attempt to hold off the crises of bourgeois leadership. Finally, they are also used to introduce breaches in an anti-imperialist and anti-dictatorial front and to cause a certain disorientation among layers of the population.

4) But we should not lose sight of the essential thing. For American imperialism, as the bipartisan Kissinger report bluntly put it, the Cuban workers state and Nicaragua are anomalies in this "internal periphery". They must in the short term be contained and if possible eliminated. This basic objective is accepted by all the bourgeois forces in the United States. They can have differences, based on their specific judgement on the internal situation in the United States, over the balance to be struck between the means to be employed: between all sorts of pressure and direct aggression. But they are united about the necessity of preventing at all costs the victory of the Salvadoran revolution, the consolidation of the revolution and state in Nicaragua and of inflicting a major defeat on the Guatemalan guerrillas.

A full-scale escalation is planned. At different levels it aims to put an ever-tightening noose around Nicaragua, to politically and militarily consolidate the present regime in El Salvador and to use this tremendous pressure to try and militarily and politically weaken the revolutionary forces. European countries (the EEC) and Latin American countries (like Venezuela and even Mexico) and now using economic weapons to try and force Nicaragua into line. Their support to the Duarte regime in El Salvador goes along the same lines. Furthermore the involvement of sectors of the European bourgeoisies, of social democracy and, in a certain respect, of the Latin American bourgeoisies in these diplomatic and political manoeuvers has a dual aim: to diversify the very strong pressure on the revolutionary forces (and those willing to aid them to one extent or another) and to lessen the political cost for Washington of a qualitative escalation with the direct presence of imperialist troops.

The first phase of a counter-revolutionary war in Central America has already begun. The Pentagon's whole strategy is to recuperate complete hegemony over the Caribbean basin, as an integral part of American imperialism's overall counter-offensive. This explains the specificity of the struggle led by the FMLN compared with both the July 26 Movement in Cuba or the FSLN in Nicaragua, which had to confront imperialist aggression after the seizure of power. Thus, what is at stake in Nicaragua and El Salvador is of exceptional importance. Consequently for workers and revolutionaries throughout the world, for those who are fighting against imperialist re-militarisation, it is of primordial importance to aid the victory of the revolutionary movements in Central America and the Caribbean and to ensure the unconditional defence of Cuba and Nicaragua.

II. Characteristics and nature of the revolution

1) In the Central American isthmus those who have always suffered oppression and exploitation no longer accept being kept down. One of the roots of their revolt — from the beginning of the 1970s, lies in the considerable deterioration of their living standards. That became linked up with continually frustrated political aspirations, permanently violated democratic rights and with unresolved social problems built up over a long period.

Over some 30 years the Central American population has more than tripled. More than 45 per cent of the population are less than 14 years old. The majority of these young people are considered a danger in themselves by the ruling classes. Somoza and the Guatemalan military have made the most open demonstration of this.

Under-employment and unemployment are growing. Unemployment levels have exploded since the end of the 1970s. Economic development in the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s further accentuated the extreme differentiation in income distribution. Nearly 65 per cent of the population lives in a "state of poverty" and 40 per cent in "extreme poverty" (57 per cent in El Salvador). Malnutrition, undernutrition, very high infant mortality rates, illiteracy, generalised lack of access to basic services (water, electricity, etc.), and endemic illness is the daily reality for the great majority of the people, who are today fighting against imperialism, its regimes and more or less openly client dictatorships.

Under the effects of the agrarian crisis and the industrialisation the urban population has rapidly increased, with proletarian and semi-proletarian agglomerations in the lower-class neighbourhoods of the main towns, especially the capital cities. Over the last fifteen years the number of students has skyrocketed. They constitute a social and political force which will play an important role in political struggles and in the growth of revolutionary organisations. However the rural population is still big, is still the majority: more than 55 per cent on average (El Salvador, Honduras with particular weight in Guatemala). The rural labour force continues to grow with a consequent increase in under-employment. Under the impact of agricultural transformations regional geographical centres have grown up. All this urban and rural "massification" underlies popular struggles.

The consequences of the international crisis of capitalism on these fragile, deformed and dependent economies resulted in their going into the most serious economic slump in their history. So the effects of "capitalist modernisation" are combined with the economic crisis in countries with an ample agricultural base, but with a newly-urbanised but severely under-employed population. The urban masses' living standards have worsened, impoverishment of small peasants, the rural proletariat and semi-proletariat has accelerated and the petty amd medium bourgeoisie have not been spared. The whole social structure has been shaken up.

2) The disruption of the oligarchical system of rule turned out to be an element favouring the revolutionary process. The ruling oligarchies — fully party to the economic "modernisation" — are being partially transformed and thus undergoing a process of differentiation that is sometimes a sign of internal tensions. This process is also taking place in the army, which was however a factor in these modifications. These oligarchies are incapable of responding to the social and political effects produced by economic growth (extension of capitalist relations of production, destruction of pre-capitalist social structures, increase in size of the urban middle-class, implantation of the multinationals, etc). The Central American Common Market (CACM) gives an impetus to these changes and — despite the crisis that appeared at the end of the 1960s — it accelerates economic and a relative growth. The socio-political effects of this growth/modernisation go beyond its strictly economic importance. On this level economic growth is partial, superficial and distorted. To take agriculture for example, only the export sector is involved in this process which goes hand in hand with a concentration of land ownership. The situation for agriculture linked to the domestic market (basic subsistence foodstuffs) is getting worse. Industrialisation is taking off — its weight in GDP has doubled in 15 years. However, it is still very fragile and does not modify the predominant importance of the agro-export sector.

The oligarchies cannot simply perpetuate the old system of rule (Costa Rica is an exception to this general framework). Inter-bourgeois infighting is more and more frequent and is expressed even inside the bourgeois state (putsches in Guatemala; conflicts in El Salvador over the agrarian reform of General Molina; the clashes in Nicaragua which were stronger and more continuous after 1975). But these oligarchies, who tend to monopolise power inside the bourgeoisie, are incapable of establishing a new system of alliances and an institutional reorganisation able to consolidate their hegemony.

In turn all reformist projects based often on sectors of the "middle classes" and liberal professions are short-lived, either destroyed by military coups or because the situation is autocratically taken in hand (in Guatemala in 1963 with Jose Arevalo; in 1972 in El Salvador when the Christian Democrats and Duarte were "deprived" of their election victory, and again in 1977; in 1967 then in 1972-73 with the liberal/conservative pact in Nicaragua). The "forces for renewal" fear the masses like the plague and usually put an end to their protest in exchange for transactions with the oligarchy, the army and imperialism. The latter always maintains the oligarchic sectors as allies.

The present regimes are structurally unable to control the rise of movements of popular protest. They cannot set up channels that can at least partially hold back such movements. Thus political-social instability intensifies. These oligarchical regimes completely devalue all components of bourgeois democracy (parliament, elections/fraud, independent legal system, freedom of the press...).

It is typical for these oligarchies and their allies to have a recourse — to defend their interests — more to bosses/professional organisations than to political parties whose usefulness is temporary since their role is limited to electoral farces. Their ideology, of "sacrifice progress in favour of order" is cemented uniquely around anti-communism which reveals their historical weakness and vacuity — though they are extremely well armed.

The recourse to state terrorism and military dictatorship — which receive the blessing of the top Catholic hierarchy up to the time when the regimes go into their deepest crisis — appears as the favoured response of the ruling circles to the difficulties of reorganising class domination and to the emergence of popular struggles. This does not exlude more combined (political and repressive) operations, such as have been seen in Honduras or, in the present situation, in Guatemala or El Salvador. However, these are in the framework of the "counter-insurgency" policy that the Guatemalan military have particularly developed.

The above-mentioned elements make it possible to understand the differences between the conditions for revolutionary struggle in Central America (once again with the exception of Costa Rica) and those in many and important countries of Latin America, where the ruling classes have other resources at their disposal and can play the card of a "controlled, albeit shaky, democratic opening".

3) The permanent intervention of American imperialism into this region has been an obstacle to the formation of national bourgeoisies with a solid base. Of course, in the framework of the "Alliance for Progress" among others, and a relative economic growth, these bourgeoisies have consolidated a little. But they remain social forces whose own national and historic project is extremely weak. This has been sharply demonstrated by the crisis as well as by the revolutionary upsurge since 1979. The consolidation of their armies and the military policy that gives them a certain possibility of negotiating with the United States (Guatemala) does not substantially change these fundamental elements. Their "monopolistic" character (control of most of the country's wealth, particularly the land, by a few families and freshly-promoted military leaders) and their subordinate association to American imperialism means that systematic repression remains a key element in their form of rule. Their economic policy, over and above super-exploitation and links with imperialist capital is often reducible to a flight of capital. The present situation shows this clearly. The present situation shows this clearly. They "sacrifice" their future class interests to the pressing demands of the moment, which show up their parasitic nature. They are ready to sell their country down the river while pretending to embody the nation's future.

Consequently it is up to the people, the oppressed masses, to bring about the formation of the nation and a really independent national state. Furthermore, it is within this broad social/national dynamic that the popular majority necessary for a victorious outcome for the revolution can be built and will be further broadened afterwards as a result of the victory itself. This is one of the major lessons of the Sandinistas' struggle against Somozaism.

4) The popular forces in Central America drew their strength from a history of struggles that in the 1930s forged the great figures of the struggle against imperialism and for national and social liberation: Sandino and Farabundo Marti. The experience of the Cardenas period and its reforms in Mexico has also left its mark. Finally, the period of the Arbenz government (1950-54) in Guatemala forms part of their heritage, revealing the limits of a bourgeois agrarian reform and a moment of intense mass mobilisation.

Since the beginning of the 1970s the mass struggles went through a series of stages leading to open military confrontation — with differences according to the countries.

From 1972-73 on inflation began to cut into incomes. Sectors like the teachers, university teachers, bank employees, social security and health workers became radicalised. Trade unions extended their influence and workers' strike grew in number. The urban shantytown dwellers and "pobladores" started to mobilise and oragnise. Peasants, demanding land, organised occupations which is an act of civil disobedience par excellence and broke with submissive, fatalist ideology. The peasants' entry onto the political scene produced a fracture which would no longer be repaired. Revolutionary organisations accumulated their forces. Protest and socio-economic movements organised openly and occasionally still legally, up to 1977-78.

New actors have joined the march of popular revolt. Christians, lay people and priests opposed to the hierarchy (base communities); Indians in Guatemala where they are the majority of the poor peasantry; women's organisations and associations of families of political prisoners and the "disappeared".

During this time, the miserable failure of bourgeois reformism undermined the credibility of possible struggles within a legal framework.

Since 1978, open and underground struggle, legal and illegal activity now becamse more combined (factory and land occupations, urban squats with self-defence and armed actions). Repression increased greatly, thousands of militants, trade union leaders, students, peasants, and workers were kidnapped and assassinated. Terror is so omnipresent that a new social category has been created: internal and external political refugees. They show the terribly precarious conditions of the underprivileged population of the whole region.

On the basis of their experience the toiling masses increasingly understood the most down-to-earth struggles for their democratic, social and economic rights were turned into political confrontations with the regimes in power. The overthrow of the dicatorship appears to be the condition for introducing any sort of substantial reform. The struggles of various social sectors converged and the political-military organisations, establishing themselves as the leading forces of the struggle of the exploited and oppressed masses, came closer together. Mass insurrections, armed peoples' movements and peoples' wars — which took on the significance of a class war — necessarily became the expression of social confrontations. The popular insurrections in Nicaragua leading to the destruction of the Somozista state apparatus (1979) and the vast mass mobilisations in El Salvador (1980) marked a turn.

A new framework for revolutionary developments in the region was now defined by the consolidation of: the Sandinista revolution, of its state, its army, the beginning of a civil war in El Salvador and the direct military and political intervention of the United States.

5) The dynamic of this revolution is not the product of sociological determinism, even if in a country like El Salvador the class structure sharpens the anti-capitalist significance of popular struggle. It cannot be understood without recognising the existence of political-military revolutionary organisations — which built themselves during the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s — with the explicit objective of the seizure of power.

These organisations took up the best of the Marxist and communist heritage in Central America and the tradition of the national, anti-imperialist liberation struggle. They are the product of a long history. They showed they were able to root themselves deeply in a national reality. This, plus the unbreakable links with the Cuban revolution is enough to show their qualitative difference with the petty-bourgeois nationalist leaderships.

Over and above these organisations political and organisational differences — which are still significant — we can define some major common features:

a) These organisations have assimilated the experience of the Cuban revolution. They above all drew a strategic lesson which has become the guiding line of all their thinking and practice for 20 years now: revolution is possible in the United States' backyard. A revolution starting with anti-dictatorial, democratic, and anti-imperialist objectives can be transformed into a socialist revolution through vetoing any imperialist mediation, by seizing power and clearly refusing any share of military power with any bourgeois sectors — that is, the refusal to reconstruct a bourgeois state after the fall of the dictatorship — and by the organisation and mobilisation of the masses to ensure their definitive hegemony.

b) The Cuban revolution and OLAS placed the armed struggle on the agenda, the necessity of armed struggle for overthrowing the dictatorships in power and, therefore, there was a break with the idea of the "peaceful road to socialism". This constituted another break with the policy of the communist parties. The communist parties either assigned a leading role to the bourgeoisie in the national-democratic revolutions and tailended it, or envisaged the constitution of a political bloc with the bourgeoisie that would not even be directly led by the latter but which would imply the maintenance of the bourgeois state apparatus. The CP also confined themselves to legalist, syndicalist and workerist activity and were incapable of bringing the impoverished urban and rural masses into the struggle.

The adoption of the "armed struggle strategy" did not exclude a series of deformations synthesised in the "focoist" theory which was to lead to impasse and resounding failures. In particular political action, properly speaking, was neglected, and often assimilated to reformism. This left an open terrain that the CPs and other reformist or nationalist forces were to occupy.

One of the big merits of the Central American revolutionary organisations, including in El Salvador, where this type of guerrilla experience did not develop at all, was to carry out a systematic rethink on the basis of the defeats of "focoism". But this rethinking took place within a continuity of experience — interms of cadres or organisations (FSLN) having gained moral and political authority — which is a key element in the maturing of these organisations. The very existence of Cuba as a "rearguard" is a component of this political-organisational continuity, despite momentary differences between these organisations and the Castroist leadership.

c) The Vietnamese revolution had in the same way encouraged the reflection of many of these revolutionary cadres. It has favoured a reassertion of political work, of the role of the party and of the idea of incorporating the masses into the armed struggle. The military question is consequently seen first of all as a political question. The Vietnamese experience will be a very important element — in addition to the critical balance sheet drawn of the urban guerrillas organised by the Uruguyan Tupamaros and the Argentinian PRT — which stimulated an advance of these organisations on the terrain of forming armies and mass fronts. In El Salvador a real revolutionary army was created after 1981.

This reference to Vietnam is occasionally directly linked to a judgement about the inevitability of American intervention — before the seizure of power — which would give the class struggle the character of a war of liberation.

Therefore the Indochinese revolution occasionally prompted some schematic and dangerous generalisations. The fact that it had the character of a war of national liberation against an occupying army brought with it by analogy the development of a strategy (for example in the case of the GPP tendency of the FSLN in Nicaragua) which very much subordinated immediate political and military action to the preparation of a war against the coming imperialist intervention. Consequently this approach marginalises political and military initiatives aiming to attack the dictatorship and seize power, before any imperialist intervention. In this sense it tends to prepare the struggle against tomorrow's enemy more than today's. It neglects political demands and the work of organising the masses. The "mountain" becomes the privileged place for action which is likely to be isolated nationally and one just organises the popular sectors of a "liberated zone".

d) So in the mid-1970s organisations were formed which in concrete activity were able to combine — each time in an original way — political, economic and military struggle. To this end they established an organic liaison between the work involved in leading the trade unions, the mass rural organisations and urban shanty-town dwellers and the armed struggle. They rejected spontaneous insurrectionalism, seen as an automatic product of self-defence. The perspective of an insurrection was re-integrated with the armed struggle, and mass action at its highest level (mass general strike, insurrectional general strike). All organisations were concerned at all times to organise the mass movement and to accumulate forces. Experience of struggle, self-defence initiatives and armed detachments were combined in this process. Armed struggle was conceived as having to develop, at a certain stage, both in the towns, the mountains and the countryside.

They put forward a national political project and became the direct protagonists of political conflicts. They took away control of the mass movement from reformist forces — including by forming mass organisations.

e) These organisations have rejected the alliances' policy as recommended by the CPs which was part and parcel of their idea of "two revolutions". The CPs, while being utterly sectarian against the revolutionary forces, tailended the bourgeois formations — at most trying to improve the relationship of forces through paper organisations included in electoral fronts.

The revolutionary organisations opposed this political line and right away were seen as the number one enemy of the dictatorships and the champions of self-determination. They contended with opposition sectors of the bourgeoisie over who the best were standard-bearers of national and anti-imperialist interests. Within this framework they were clear about who were the motorforces of these revolutions: the alliance of the workers, semi-proletariat and peasant masses. All the specific elements were built (class organisations, military forces, etc.) to ensure their independence and hegemony within the framework of these alliances. For, in these revolutions which begin around national democratic tasks, they grasped the importance of the utility of alliances in anti-dictatorial and anti-imperialist struggle. But the substance of this alliance policy was summed up very well by FSLN leader, J. Wheelock: "The axis of our alliances policy was not the bourgeoisie, but the people. That isn't a demagogic declaration. It is the basic truth. Our programme and our schema of the forces (involved) were based on a concrete reality. We had the arms and the people with us. It was an anti-dictatorial, popular and revolutionary alliance." (El Gran Desafio, p.26)

Armed with this approach the revolutionary organisations were able to bring together different forms and levels of radical consciousness into the melting pot of the anti-dictatorial and anti-imperialist struggle: from the Marxist and communist current, the "liberation theology" supporters, the radical democratic forces to the revolt of the Indian masses determined to conquer their dignity.

f) Finally they developed an internationalist policy. They demonstrated a good understanding of the revolutionary process on the regional and continental scale. They have built up an authentically revolutionary international diplomacy, which functions not only in the battle against imperialist intervention but in extending mass solidarity worldwide. Their solidarity with the struggles of their brothers and sisters in Central America and the Caribbean has been consistently demonstrated.

These revolutionary organisations — like the FSLN or the FMLN — are in the front line of a far-reaching process of recomposition of the workers' movement and its vanguard internationally.[2] The development of such currents helps to increase the impact of our programme and perspectives internationally. To this effect the Fourth International and its sections must strive, in addition to solidarity work, to learn from the experiences of these comrades' struggle, to get into a dialogue with them and to let our positions be known on the various questions that are the subject of their discussions. The organised members of the Fourth International in these countries will be able to fully participate in the struggle led by these organisations and to explain the overall positions of our movement.

6) The Central American revolution therefore draws on and deepens the lessons of the Cuban revolution. There is an uninterrupted, permanent revolution, that advances from democratic and anti-imperialist tasks towards socialist ones. The destruction of the state apparatus and it repressive backbone (army, police, special units) and the establishment of a revolutionary regime independent of the bourgeoisie and imperialism appears as an obligatory condition for ensuring the implementation of democratic and anti-imperialist measures and to transform the national democratic revolution onto the path of the socialist revolution. The reactions of imperialism, its links with a bourgeoisie carrying out an increasing amount of economic sabotage and military and political attacks mean that the workers' and peasants' power, the dictatorship of the proletariat — based on the army, the militia, and the mass organisations — has to make more and more frequent inroads into capitalist property. The transition to socialist measures is the guarantee of a consolidation and extension of social gains and national independence.

III. The Nicaraguan revolution[3]

1) The dual power situation opened up in April/May 1979 was qualitatively changed on 19th July. After the revolutionary overthrow of Somoza and the destruction of the National Guard (which overlapped practically completely with the Somozista state) the effective centre of decision-making and the centralisation of popular power was in the hands of the FSLN.

The essential part of the bourgeois state apparatus — its repressive forces — was destroyed, and a revolutionary army was formed whose origin, composition, leadership structure and training was a direct result of the revolutionary war waged by the FSLN. In Nicaragua, as in all revolutions, the state apparatus was not totally liquidated in one blow (administration, Central Bank, parts of the legal system). However its principal prop had been broken and another of a different class character took its place. The Sandinista army expressing the aspirations of the toiling masses held the real power in the country.

The bourgeoisie held — and continues to hold — substantial economic strongholds. Nevertheless, its traditional political weakness; its inability in the final period to get hold of, however small, a part of the leadership of the anti-Somoza struggle; the fact that it was obliged to exist in the shadow of Sandinism during the crucial phase of the revolution, all made it even less able to transpose the weight of its economic pressure onto the political level. It has organisations — above all the COSEP, some channels of expression (La Prensa, private radios), influential allies in the Catholic hierarchy and fragile political parties. It has support in a part of the state apparatus (administration, banks, justice), but this personnel is deprived of strategic decision-making power.

This intermixing of elements not only reproduces aspects already seen in other revolutionary processes (Cuba) but also is related to the relative brevity of the dual power situation properly speaking and to the political line followed by the FSLN (creation of the Government Junta of National Reconstruction — JGRN — in June 1979. Thus after 19th July there were still some elements of this situation of dual power. But such elements existed in the framework of a centralised power in the hands of the FSLN representing the interests of the workers and peasants. There isn't any sort of more or less equal-handed share-out of the antagonistic elements of power. The beam of the balance was decisively tipped. Power passed into the hands of the workers.

The conquest of political power and control over the essential mechanisms of state power is the beginning of any proletarian revolution and gave the FSLN the instruments to defend the revolution, to deepen it, to broaden and consolidate its social base, to launch inroads into bourgeois property and to transform the direction of the economy in the interests of the class which had made the revolution. The pace of these transformations — particularly in a country where the productive forces are very weakly developed, which is in extreme dependence and also facing tremendous imperialist pressure — depends on a whole series of national and international political, social and economic factors.

The 19th July 1979 marked the first steps of the dictatorship of the proletariat based on an alliance with the peasantry, of the construction of a workers state, which has to be consolidated like any emerging workers state. In this sense there is a transition in the consolidation/building of a workers state. There is a contradiction — but it is compressed within the straightjacket of the new regime — between the socio-economic class content (weight of the private sector) of property relations and the class content of this emerging dictatorship of the proletariat. This contradiction expresses the difference that exists between the the appropriation of political power by the FSLN — ie the establishment of the dictatorship — and the consolidation of this dictatorship through the expropriation of bourgeois and imperialist property and the introduction of collectivised property relations. The dictatorship of the proletariat — where the proletariat disposes of an instrument, the state — opens up a transitional period in which there can be an opposition between the class character of political power and the class character of economic relations. Certainly in the last instance the economic foundations will be decisive in the consolidation of the workers state. In such a crossroads situation which constitutes a necessary moment in any revolution it is the orientation of all the measures taken which brings into harmony the class which made the revolution with its social content.

An examination of the measures and gains of the revolution over the five last years only confirms the strengthening of the new workers state, the "second free territory of the Americas."[4]

2) After 19th July three problems have to be taken into account to evaluate the major choices made by the Sandinista leadership. In the first place the radical challenge to the status quo in Central America was bound to trigger off — in a more or less short lapse of time — imperialist aggression. To gain time, to look for (even fragile) support from various countries and to make use of inter-imperialist contradictions served to politically consolidate the revolution and to strengthen its military defence. Then under the impact of the Sandinista revolution the revolutionary upsurge in the Central American isthmus speeded up. The course of the Nicaraguan revolution was from that time linked to the advance of these revolutions and in turn to the counter-revolutionary actions of imperialism and its allies. Finally the FSLN has to deal with a large-scale economic disaster.

In this context it rapidly consolidated the main instruments of its power, the power of the hegemonic bloc of workers and peasants, of semi- and sub-proletarian layers.

a) The cornerstone of the new state is the revolutionary army. To build and professionalise the EPS (the Sandinista People's Army — the name speaks for itself) was logically a priority task. Its hard nucleus is formed of some 5,000 fighters, ex-members of the FSLN "regular forces". A literacy and politicalisation campaign among the ranks was then organised. The entire command structure is in the hands of the Front. The Sandinista police was set up at the same time. A great part of its membership is made up of anti-Somoza working class fighters, thrown into unemployment because of war damage.

While the priority at the very beginning was given to the EPS, the FSLN leadership prepared for the creation of the militia. The Sandinista People's Militia (MPS) were formed in February 1980. Organised on a volunteer basis, dozens of thousands of workers and young people quickly enrolled.

Decisions concerning the Interior and Defence ministries were made within the combined national leadership of the FSLN made up of the "9 commandantes of the revolution".

b) Political conflict arising in the first phase of the revolution showed where real decision-making power lay. Already in December 1979, the FSLN decided to reorganise the government — assigning itself the three decisive ministries: Defence (H. Ortega), Agriculture and Land Reform (J. Wheelock) and the plan (H. Ruiz).

From this time the COSEP (High Council of Private Enterprise) publicly concentrated its fire on one target "The FSLN must reduce its hold over the army, police and CDS (Sandinista Defence Committees)".

In March/April 1980 the JGRN (Government Junta of National Reconstruction) broke up on the question of the composition of the Council of State. A solid majority of seats were assigned to the mass organisations and parties thus expressing the majority opinion of the population. The departure of the two bourgeois representatives from the JGRN (V. Chamorro-Barrios and A.Robelo) was revealing in several respects. The Council of State was established without encountering opposition on 4th May — marking the anniversary of the pursuit of Sandino's anti-imperialist struggle despite the bourgeois betrayal (1927). Those who resigned were not immediately replaced. The bourgeois opposition dealt directly with the nine "commandantes", as they knew who decided in the last analysis. And it was the latter who named the new junta — without concern for excessive fomality. Two new bourgeois personalities (A. Cruz and R. Cordoba Rivas) were included in the Junta. The COSEP was disarmed and publicly ratified the presence of the new Junta members. Then the COSEP demanded a constituent assembly, the separation of the FSLN from the state, Junta members with a right to veto, control of the legal system and finances and formal guarantees concerning the maintenance of private property.

Conflicts around the formation of the Council of State, a consultative body, confirmed in two ways who was master of the situation. On the one hand the FSLN leadership showed it held the tiller of the state and was not making any, even slightly substantial, concessions to the bourgeoisie. On the other hand the replacement of two bourgeois representatives by two others demonstrated — in a way — that nothing had changed. Bourgeois representation was completely subordinated and did not have any more commanding levers in the centre of the new state apparatus with Cruz than it had with Robelo.

In July 1980, H. Ortega, answering COSEPs demand for elections announced that they would be held in 1985. Once again who decided? Better still, the Ministry of Defence declared that genuine democracy meant the reduction of social inequality and not just elections which "would be organised to bring peoples' power to perfection".

At the end of 1980 the bourgeoisie launched a new offensive on the now familiar theme: the FSLN has a monopoly of power. But this time it was combined with the first armed attacks on the revolution. The bourgeois opposition momentarily withdrew a part of its members from the Council of State, which was to be restuctured a few months later by a JGRN now reduced to three members with Daniel Ortega as the co-ordinator!

The bourgeoisie and imperialism increasingly centred their opposition both on the economic terrain which obliged the JGRN to proclaim a state of economic and social emergency (September 1981) and on the military terrain which obliged the JGRN to impose a state of emergency (March 1982). The bourgeoisie's political manoeuvres were not dropped but these became simple complements to economic sabotage and to more or less open support for counter-revolutionary military actions organised from bases in Honduras and Costa Rica.

c) The basis of the new regime, in addition to the EPS and the militias, is founded on the development of mass organisations. Certain of these were a direct product of the revolutionary struggle (ATC, CDS).

They are represented by:

• The Sandinista Defence Committees (CDS) which are very important for the effort to unify differentiated layers of the population.

• The Sandinista Workers Confederation (CST) which for the first time organised a majority of the workers on a national scale and set off (after a few disappointments) a prolongued effort of unifying the independent working class trade union movement (formation in February 1980 of the national inter-trade union commission).

• The Association of Rural Workers (ATC), catalyst of the land reform, of the defence of the rural proletariat and semi-proletariat and of keeping the latifundistas (landowners) under surveillance: an organic link exists between the CST and the ATC, materialising the workers' and peasants' alliance.

• The Nation Union of Farmers and Ranchers/Stockrearers (UNAG) which aimed to organise this fraction of the small and middle peasantry, decisive for food production, for the development of the co-operatives and whose support is key to defeat the counter-revolution.

• The Luisa Amanda Espinoza Association of Nicaraguan Women (AMLAE) which set a task of winning many rights that women had always been denied. Women played a considerable role in the revolution.

• The 19th July Sandinista Youth (JS 19), as a result of the impulse given by the literacy campaign and the formation of student production brigades (BEP) now organises a sector of the youth. The literacy campaign was a vast effort of political consciousness raising of the urban and especially rural masses.

Organisations with a trade union character are independent of the FSLN. Even though it exerts preponderant political influence, the Front does not impose its monopoly. They are open to anybody and everybody. Their growth is a feature of these years. These organisations have initiated a deepgoing transformation of mass consciousness and the organisation of power in society.

Their functions and objectives, which are not always achieved, can be summarised as follows:

• Encourage the people's active participation in all aspects of social life.

• To facilitate various sectors of the population coming together to defend their interests, to express their needs, raise their class consciouness and get involved in a dialogue (occasionally conflictual) with the FSLN or the ministries.

• To participate in the institutions of political power — shown by the weight of their representation in the Council of State, or their role in the formation of the municipal Juntas.

• To support economic reconstruction, co-operate in or take charge of educational campaigns, of public health, of the maintenance of local facilities and in this way to help to increase the living standards of the most impoverished layers of the population; they also educate people in management and administration through the planning and organisation of their activities and tasks and train their leaderships at all levels.

• To defend the revolution against misinformation campaigns and sabotage.

• To struggle against the "abuses of authority", arrogance, bureaucratisation — an inherent danger in such an underdeveloped situation — and for moral, civic attitudes in a society so deeply marked in the past by corruption of all sorts.

• They combine changing the social and economic situation by revolutionary practice with the "self-transformation of man" (Marx).

From the first months the FSLN used political power to organise and broaden the popular majority carrying forward the revolution and to initiate the transition to socialism.

d) The FSLN is the centre of gravity of real power, it has consolidated its hegemony and legitimacy by refusing to a priori introduce ruptures with bourgeois sectors included in the June 1979 coalition. It has brought about these breaks in connection with concrete tasks and choices flowing from the necessary advance of the revolution and favouring the advance of mass consciousness. Each time the bourgeoisie is caught off balance it is exposed as having broken with the "Sandinista project", and it appears in the eyes of the people as opposed to "anti-imperialist" national unity and to "national reconstruction".

The FSLN approach reveals an aptitude to grasp the articulation between the maturing of national anti-imperialist and socialist consciousness. A process of clarification operated (and is operating) in which the FSLN imposed itself with increasing force, no longer just as the current which had overthrown the dictatorship but as the force which was leading the people to a "new society". The concessions made on one or another point to the bourgeoisie — which still has resources, especially due to the links with imperialism — must be resituated in this overall dynamic and in the framework of strengthening the position of working people — in order to be correctly evaluated.

The political hegemony of the FSLN rests on the authority it won during the struggle against imperialism and against the dictatorship, and its ability to include the main forces active in the country in the project of building the "new Nicaragua"; a project that demonstrates in practice its superiority over the ideas of other political and social forces.

The continuous conquest and reconquest of this hegemony presupposes pluralism particularly as the ideological bedrock of the Nicaraguan revolution rests in the political and cultural alliance between nationalism, the heritage of the socialist revolutions (particularly Cuba) and, also, a Christian current that was ready to take part in the most determined struggles for national and social independence.

3) The "mixed economy", the way the FSLN characterise the economic structure in Nicaragua cannot be considered without taking into account the challenging of imperialist domination and the nature of the present regime. The evolution of such a situation must be looked at.

The fact is, the control of the state that was built after July 1979 has imparted its own imprint on the "mixed character" of the economy as a result of its having the means and the social base needed to increase its inroads into private property and to expand the areas already under its control (foreign exchange, distribution, credit, etc.). It acts as a lever for economic change, as a permanent instrument of coercion. Obviously, this has not eliminated the sharp contradictions between the various sectors of the economy, between the social and economic goals of the revolution and the pressure of the world market as well as the reproduction mechanisms of a private sector that is still prevalent in the strategic agro-export sector. But the present regime can resolve these contradictions on the basis of the priorities dictated by the defence of the revolution. The "extra-economic" character of the state becomes an economic force.

a) During all this phase the economic policy choices made by the FSLN cannot be isolated either from the state of the economy in 1979, or from international factors, or from the critical balance sheet it had drawn from the first steps of the transition made by the Castroist leadership in Cuba.

Some of the measures of the economic situation should be recalled:

• The heritage left by the Somozista regime and the civil war: 50,000 dead and about 100,000 wounded, considerable destruction of industry and disorganisation of two agricultural cycles with repercussions on foods supplies and exports; GDP per capita had declined to levels of 17 years before; a massive foreign debt, a near-total lack of foreign currencies and a high inflation; a total budget imbalance accompanied with a massive "social deficit" (illiteracy, health and housing).

• A poorly developed capitalist economy (much less developed than Cuba in 1959), therefore with a small, recently formed, urban and rural proletariat, a very thin layer of technical cadres (400 all told for agriculture!).

• Dependence on agro-exports for earning foreign income, while the latter is extremely sensitive to exchange rate fluctuations and demand on a crisis-ridden world market; development of the agro-export sector distorts the "balance" of imports (fertilizer, chemical products, machinery and spare parts) in addition to the traditional foodstuff deficit.

• There was the ever-present threat of economic sanctions and even of a blockade.

b) The new regime, confronted with such a difficult situation, swiftly moved to take control of four important sectors of the economy: the property of Somoza and his allies — which provided the backbone of the Public P[illegible]y Sector (APP); the financial system and insurance; foreign trade (gradually nationalised up to 70 per cent of exports); all natural resources.

The FSLN say there are a series of considerations that argue in favour of not immediately taking over the agro-export sector:

• The fragility, the lack of cohesion of the bourgeoisie allowed a certain margin of manoeuvre and facilitated a "productive alliance" — in exchange for which there is nothing other than the implicit hope — and possibility — for bourgeois sectors to profit from their economic strongholds in the new "trench warfare".

• The subsidiary benefits this alliance aimed for was the immediate granting of vital credits and a postponement of the imperialist economic stranglehold. About 1.5 billion dollars were rapidly allocated under favourable conditions. For three years there was no evident enthusiasm from the "socialist camp" — with the decisive exception of Cuba — to provide massive aid. Besides, this aid only relatively corresponds with immediate needs and diversifying aid and trade is a positive political element in the battle against Washington's warmongering.

• The APP requires a lot of complicated organisation both nationally and locally to avoid an explosion of extra costs that are inevitable in such a transition. There is an extreme tension between this priority and all the other priorities flowing more strictly from the reconstruction process. For the APP to generate a significant surplus a relatively efficient administrative ability must develop and facilitate the later takeover of new agricultural or manufacturing companies. But the FSLN has only won a small number of cadres to its perspectives and the level of preparation of the workers in this field is very low.

• Weak socialisation of the productive forces (weight of small commodity production, of artisan production, of small and middle peasantry) makes central planning a problem; its field of application is due to extend rapidly. Also there is a limited correspondence between the structure of demand resulting from the change in the distribution of income and what the APP can offer. Planning also requires its transition.

The FSLN therefore opted for a combination between direct control over a minority APP and indirect control (foreign trade, credit, production contracts, fixing prices and wages, etc.) over the private sector (AP), with all the limits inherent in the use of these types of mechanisms in a context of class confrontation. Planning the APP with regionalisation in a second phase was introduced with great difficulties. Annual plans concerning major objectives and tasks were decided on.

The FSLN has clearly emphasised its medium-term objective is to have the state and co-operative-owned sectors become the majority and preponderant sector of the economy.

4) In response to the demands of the masses and the bourgeoisie's sabotage the Sandinistas were to modify the rules of the game to the disadvantage of the former ruling classes.

a) In the second quarter of 1980 the legislation against decapitalisation (capital flight, destruction of the means of production and raw materials, hoarding) made it possible to sanction these illegal acts by the total or partial confiscation of land or plants. The ATC and the CST played a significant role in the implementation of this division between those "who respond to the needs of reconstruction" and "those who sabotage" without a political bonus being given to the former. The control of currency exchange steadily increased and the overall system was established in May 1983.

b) The Land Reform, a key element in the economic upheavals, after its anti-Somozista stage, was extended first of all by expropriating the land occupied by poor peasants during the first months of the revolution and by lowering the rent for land. A new stage began with the transfer of land left fallow, or badly cultivated by the big landowners, to the landless peasants, the small poor peasantry and occasionally to the state farms. It was a direct attack on latifundist property.

At this stage, the emphasis was placed on the voluntary formation of production and services (CSS and CAS) co-operatives. They are more apt to respond to the burning problem of unemployment than the APP in the short and medium term. They made it possible to associate with the revolution this high proportion of small and semi-proletarian peasants who are of strategic importance for the production of foodstuffs.

A third stage of the agrarian reform opened at the start of 1984. This consisted of massive granting of property rights to small peasants who worked the land without having ownership titles, particularly in the "agricultural frontier" zone. There was an answer in this to the efforts of the armed bands of counter-revolutionaries to try and find a base of support among the peasants. Each stage of the agrarian reform is closely linked to a systematic effort to organise the peasant movement.

For its part, the state guarantees with difficulty the provision of a certain number of consumer goods and services. It buys a part of their production at fixed guaranteed prices. In this way it has control of about 40 per cent of the distribution of basic foodstuffs (by volume), (ENABAS). A series of important agricultural and agro-industrial projects have got underway.

Agriculture has undergone both a real economic reactivation and a partial transformation of social relations, the difficult twofold challenge every radical land reform must face.

The weight of the big landowner compared to the state and co-operative sector has diminished. In July 1979 the big landowners (more than 500 manzanas) controlled 36.1 per cent of cultivable land; in July 1984 they controlled 11 per cent. In the private sector (AP) the increase in associative forms of production (co-operatives) has led to a deepgoing differentiation, undermining the base of the reactionary UPANIC (Professional Union of Nicaraguan Farmers). In 1984, 44,000 families benefited from the Land Reform, 25,000 of whom now produce in co-operatives. The CAS control 8.2 per cent of cultivable land; the CSS 10.7 per cent and the APP 18.3 per cent.

The Land Reform is an instrument in the hands of the motor forces of the revolution. Brutal super-exploitation has been ended not only in the state sector but also in the private sector where the ATC can make its force felt. A real cataclysm is sweeping the Nicaraguan countryside — apart from anything else with the progress of the co-operatives — an intensive transformation of the political and cultural level of the peasant masses is taking place.

c) Alongside all these gains are the large steps forward made in the fields of education, health, housing, social services which are all solid bases for future development.

5) A series of difficulties and tensions, produced by a great number of external constraints, by the structure of a dependent agro-exporting economy and specific to the transition, were to forcefully emerge.

The slow pace of industrial recovery — in the nationalised and private sector — was worse than government forecasts (lack of spare parts, pernicious effects of long term decapitalisation, management difficulties, restriction of outlets on the Central American market, a more or less open blockade by imperialism).

The inflationist pressure was initially held back by the means of a certain adjustment between a very limited supply and increased demand (the reduction in unemployment increases the volume of salaries even when wages are frozen). It is impossible to carry out a policy of increasing wages in Nicaraguan economic conditions. But the social and political need to increase the living standards ("social wage") of the underprivileged layers weighs on the budget and is another expense on top of the costs of recapitalisation and reconstruction.

Banking on the agro-export private sector to earn net export revenue brings in itself contradictions in relation to the social objectives of the transition. Restructuring production — both agro-export and basic foodstuffs — and responding to the most urgent needs of the masses led to the necessity of external finances. It was therefore indispensable to control export income and especially its allocation between the agricultural export and non-export sector otherwise the effort of accumulation would be placed on the backs of the small peasantry or paid for by further debt, which has greatly increased, particularly when compared with the income of foreign currency produced by exports. But the state only owns a limited part of this sector.

The most precarious equilibrium was aimed at so that the incentives offered to the agro-export sector did not come into too open conflict with a social redistribution of income.

A growing number of capitalists, among others those of average importance, invested little. There is a diversion of capital to the commercial sector where investment is easily recuperated. The flight of capital continues and the over-valuation of the cordoba in relation to the dollar requires excessive coverage of current change operations.

The bulk of state funds (approximately 40 per cent) allocated to agriculture goes to the big private sector producers. Most come under the heading "short term loans" which reflects a limited capitalist effort of modernisation. The accumulation effort rests on the shoulders of the state with a big proportion connected with construction (development projects and defence). Taking this into account along with the other points (including subsidies for a number of consumer goods) opens wide the trap of the foreign debt and of financing the budget deficit (8 percent of GDP in 1980, 23.3 per cent in 1983) by printing money with the consequent inflationist pressure.

Eliminating the rule of the old ruling class caused a decline in agricultural productivity. The land redistribution, the lowering of rents and defence needs considerably reduced the supply of labour for seasonal crops. Volunteer work partially remedied this but with negative effects on productivity. Migration to the towns continues and increases the contradiction between urban under-employment (non-registered/undeclared sector in Managua) and the lack of agricultural labour and the difficulty of channelling this work force into the productive sectors.

Direct access to the market by a large number of foodstuff producers opens up a wide field for market forces both in production and distribution (reduction of area seeded, sales on the black market) and work organisation.

The credit policy for small and medium-sized peasants is not a solution for those who are too poor to get into debt or who do not have land, which explained the speeding up of land distribution from 1982/3. There was then the risk that the debt would become a barrier between the state and a sector of the peasantry — which explains why the peasant debt was restructured in 1983. Production co-operatives receive priority aid. The service co-operatives — more widespread — cannot avoid a certain social differentiation but this cannot result in acquisition of land.

The growth of the APP and the co-operative sector is stronger than that of the AP. But the co-ordination between the APP and the co-operative sector is still just a question of projects for the moment while effective planning of the APP is difficult to achieve. There is a very loose articulation between the annual plan, external resources and the budget. The private sector takes advantage of the breach left open in the control over foreign trade to carry out speculative operations. The shrinking of private investment has effects on employment which is partly counter-balanced by the land distribution and defence mobilisation. The tension between accumulation and consumption is worsening. Spending power has declined even for popular layers of the population. Nevertheless there has been an improvement in living standards of the most underprivileged sectors and a general improvement in social services.

Since the beginning of 1983 the economy has been put on a state of war basis. The counter-revolution drains an important part of resources to defence needs (25 per cent of the budget in 1984). In 1983 material damage was equal to 20 per cent of overall investment. Whole agricultural zones are threatened and the co-operatives are the prime targets of the counter-revolution.

The financial boycott has been tightened up although in 1983 loans were still steadily flowing in. The contribution of the "socialist countries" or countries like Algeria, Libya, or Iran has increased. However, that has not compensated for the drying up of multilateral and bilateral loans, and aid is far from meeting Nicaragua's needs. Development projects have been disrupted. The value of export revenue has stagnated, the trade balance is very negative and interest payments on the debts are a heavy burden.

The food deficit, despite massive efforts, grew. Shortage of certain basic products appeared. That is explained by the lack of foreign exchange (imports), the increase in popular consumption of basic products and the difficulties the state has to control a greater part of food production and distribution.

FSLN economic policy hangs on a knife edge. The heritage of the past, imperialist aggression and social polarization totally disrupted the accumulation process. The state has become the only dynamic centre for distribution. This explains, along with the active participation of the people and despite all the obstacles, the 1983 economic results. But this investment effort was accomplished at the cost of a considerable budget deficit and was supported by foreign aid which is now declining. The law of value and the market, given the minority role of the state and co-operative sector comes into even sharper contradiction with the first attempts at planning.

The limitations of this initial economic strategy became greater and greater. A war economy was installed. Defence and self-sufficiency in food were prioritised. Rationing was introduced for various products. Subsidies for basic goods — except for milk and sugar — were cut by half. The state took over distribution for six essential products (June 1984). Measures were adopted confiscating the speculators' property and goods. A strict law in defence of consumers was adopted at the same time to back up the central fixing of the prices of basic goods and to "share out shortages on an equal basis".

In such a situation the main strength of the FSLN resides in its capacity to mobilise the masses, to consolidate their organisations and their collaboration in managing the APP; their anticipation in extending the co-operative sector; their control over distribution; their trade union presence in the private sector (control/management).

The war situation places strict limits on the extent to which economic policy can move. The reorganisation of the economy has to be carried out in accordance with the exigencies of defence of the revolution — military, social and political — against not only the war waged by the counter-revolutionaries but also the threat of a massive imperialist intervention. This military pressure comes on top of the structural weaknesses inherited from the past. There is a narrow path between, on the one hand, measures that would require increased control over the share-out of the surplus (planning) such as a central allocation of a portion of the agro-export income (with the difficulties that exist in carrying through such a project) and the exigencies of defence needs (with the austerity measures that flow from that). It is in this context of hard confrontations between the revolution and counter-revolution — in one of the most difficult geo-strategic positions — that the toiling masses and the FSLN face the historic challenge of consolidating the workers state.

6) The goal of imperialism is still the overthrow of the Sandinista regime. At the moment its attacks aim to precipitate Nicaragua into a crisis which would be without solution and turn a vacillating sector of the population against the revolutionary government.

a) The contras infiltrate in small groups in many regions of the country. However, they have been unable to take over any town even of minor importance and install permanent control over an area paving the way for the declaration of a provisional government which would then call for the aid of the US army and its regional allies. The revolutionary forces have hit them extremely hard. The attempt to use the frictions between the FSLN and the Miskito population in a strategic region (the Atlantic coast, Zelaya) had not brought imperialism the expected results. However, the price paid by the FSLN has been high. Time was needed to lessen the effects of errors in dealing with ethnic, cultural and historical problems of this type. The FSLN is evolving towards a position that includes the right of autonomy for the Atlantic Coast communities.

Imperialist and reactionary efforts to unleash a civil war in Nicaragua as a pretext for intervention have floundered up to now.

b) The bourgeois opposition has presented itself as the champion of pluralism and elections — in fact it was banking on them being annulled. The announcement of the elections for the 4th November 1984 caught it unprepared. The opposition vacillated continuously between a boycott (advocated by COSEP from the outset) and participation. It then developed a tactic of conditional participation. The demands of the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordination (CDN) — bringing together the Social Christian Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Constitutional Liberal Party — were revealing insofar as they pointed to a desire to eradicate the memory of July 1979 (de facto suppression of the EPS; elimination of the obligatory military service; reorganisation of relations between the FSLN and the state; annulment of the law on capitalisation; supervision of the elections by the Organisations of American States, as a recourse to imperialist mediation).

The CDN candidate, Arturo Cruz, blatantly supported by Washington, tried to force a "national dialogue with the armed opposition". This "dialogue" was presented as the precondition for holding "really free elections". The whole of bourgeois and imperialist strategy was to make the elections illegitimate — nationally and internationally — and to give recognition to the contras.

The FSLN defeated this policy through a firm rejection of any "national dialogue" with the contras and a number of overtures towards the opposition, wherein existed several contradictions. The massive registration on the voters' list strengthened the position of the Sandinistas and indicated their capacity to bring out an "anti-imperialist consensus" among broad sectors of the population, beyond their direct social base.

The whole policy of the bourgeoisie betrayed their social weakness after five years of the revolution. The former ruling classes could no longer combat the revolution without directly joining the camp of the imperialists and their mercenaries.

The official church is the most organised opposition force. It has a presence among the people and has a strong national and international propaganda apparatus. It seeks confrontation with the Sandinistas. It was the Bishops' Conference, which, in April 1984, proposed "a dialogue with all sectors, including Nicaraguans who have taken up arms against the government". But this church is divided on class lines. The FSLN recognises Christianity as a constituent element of the revolution and was able to link up with the "Christian communities at the base" rooted among the most underprivileged. "God's ministers are ministers of the Revolution." The FSLN takes on the reactionary hierarchy on its own terrain.

7) The November 1984 elections were the first free elections in Nicaraguan history where politics previously amounted to a regulated and limited struggle between two bourgeois factions.

a) The law on the political parties adopted in August 1983 in the framework of a thoroughgoing reworking of the legal system, allows the existence of all political parties, both bourgeois and working class, "constituted to contend for political power with the aim of carrying out a political programme responding to the needs of the country's national and social development". The very democratic March 1984 electoral law lays down that the exercise of universal suffrage, for all persons over 16, is an "inalienable right (of all people) to build a new society and its own future without external interference of any kind". It provides for the election of an executive with a six year term of office (president and vice-president elected by relative majority) and a parliament (an assembly elected by proportional representation) having in an initial period the function of a constituent assembly. This law correctly decrees the removal of the right to vote and to stand for election for ex-National Guard officers and from all those involved in military and sabotage actions against the revolution.

The November 1984 elections clearly indicate that the FSLN is far from reducing "mass democracy" to the question of elections. But they do not exclude them from their conception of democracy. The FSLN gave priority to the social aspects of democracy and the role of the mass organisations. In fact, these elections were organised after a certain consolidation of the new regime that issued from the July 1979 victory and after a first massive effort in the realm of education, health, etc.

The bourgeoisie — in the tradition of elections under Somoza where terror, poverty, illiteracy and clientelism emptied the formal right to vote of all content — demanded elections rapidly after July 1979. It was more hesitant in 1984!

But, by assuring democratic elections, the FSLN showed that it was also ready to put the majority support for the revolution to the test on the terrain that is not necessarily the most favourable for it: that of universal, secret suffrage. It passed the test in a decisive fashion. Not only was there 85 per cent participation in the elections — despite the war situation in many regions — but the political hegemony of the FSLN was confirmed, including on this level.

By introducing elections into the mechanisms institutionalising the new regime, by making official an opposition with some 30 per cent of the votes, the FSLN has chosen to face up to a series of problems that are relatively new in the history of the transition to socialism. This is more than a challenge to imperialism. The FSLN is not only keeping open a broad space for political debate but it is ensuring a legal existence to the opposition parties and trade unions, while taking strict measures of self-defence against those who are in practice sabotaging the revolution.

The FSLN used these elections as a second political literacy campaign, taking into account what would be the meaning of these elections — the first free elections in the country. This was an opportunity for political pedagogy for the mass organisations, for the thousands of members and sympathisers of the FSLN. As Article 1 of the electoral law states: "The Sandinista people's revolution insitutionalises the Nicaraguan people's right to elect its supreme authorities". In this way the FSLN demonstrated the irreversible character of the gains of July 1979. But, at the same time, by linking elections to the functioning of the institutions, it has introduced a sort of permanent constraint, through the possible of vote of sanctions, against bureaucratic deformation, the loss of relations with the masses, etc.

During the elections, the FSLN was also to publicly draw out the lessons of the internal tragedy of the revolution in Grenada. On this occasion it emphasised three aspects: the necessity to maintain a democratic debate in front of the masses; the need to ensure their direct participation in the process; the imperative need to arm them.

The orientation of the FSLN and the place of the mass organisations in the former Council of State, leaves open the possibility that, in the framework of the constitutional norms that will be established by the new assembly, a new element wil be added to the institutionalisation of the revolutionary process: the direct representation of these organisations, their real participation, at the local, regional and national level, in the working out of and the application of the major social econmic decisions. The question of the respective competences of such a body of direct representation and of the legislature is therefore likely to be posed in the future.

In these conditions the question of building the Sandinista revolutionary party is posed. Rather broad political eduction has been carried out. Cadres develop through the activities of the JS 19, the ATC, the CST, etc. But building the party as such still has to be done. The leadership of the revolutionary process rests a lot on the authority of the collective leadership of the FSLN. The 9 "commandantes". The delay in building the party is certainly explained by the lack of cadres, their being absorbed in the defence and reconstruction effort and by the lack of functioning as a party. But this delay does involve some risks: in terms of ensuring internal democracy of the FSLN (beyond the Sandinista Assembly — a consultative body of 72 members), of counter-balancing the deformations arising from a superimposition of the state apparatus and the FSLN or finally of leading mass political struggle in the framework of party pluralism.

b) The major advantage of the FSLN, in this period of extreme tension, remains the maximum political popular participation in the revolutionary process. The strengthening of the mass organisations has been a feature of the last five years.

The FSLN has had important subjective and objective difficulties at the level of the organisation and participation of workers in management — both in industry and in agriculture. In the agrarian sector the "reactivation assemblies" rather rapidly resulted in a dead end. Since 1981 they have been replaced, in the land reform farms, by "consultative councils". The latter have only partially met the need for an increased integration of producers in management. In the industrial public sector, after an experience of "reactivation assemblies", various structures have been set up (production committees etc) to try and more precisely define the forms of participation of producers in the leadership of workplaces and economic sectors. In the AP the CST has given an impetus to actions of control against economic sabotage and in favour of more effective management. The ban on the right to strike was lifted in 1984.

Shortages and speculation also reveal the limits and at the same time the potential of the CDS. Two crucial questions some out of the balane sheets drawn of the CDS: the first, the need to ensure a more effective and democratic functioning of the CDS (elections and right of recall) so as to fight head on the inertia and bureaucratic tendencies inherent in such a situation of crisis and shortages; the second, to use the social economic problems in order to stimulate a "control from below" of the functioning of the state apparatus. The most immediate needs of defence could reinforce rigid administrative tendencies and restrict the autonomy of certain mass organisations. The FSLN shows it is really conscious of these problems.

Defence is the priority. The mass organisations directly participate in the defence effort. In the war zones, intensive political work is directed towards the peasantry so as to avoid reducing the battle against the mercenary forces to just a military one.

Initially the patriotic military service brought out into the open those upholders of "national independence" who refused to serve the cause of anti-imperialist combat. It gives military training to broad layers of young people. Thanks to the MPS and military service the EPS is not obliged to disperse itself which would facilitate a brutal offensive from imperialism in a strategic zone. The FSLN made great efforts to attenuate the consequences of this defence effort (pensions to the families of the victims, guaranteeing the maintenance of a person's job after service, compensation to peasants whose crops or land are damaged...)

c) The FSLN is vigorously stepping up its diplomatic initiatives. The axis of all the FSLN's diplomacy is based on the right to self determination of the peoples of the region and the refusal of all interferences in the internal affairs of Central America and on the liquidation of the foreign military bases. This can profit only the revolutionary forces and is fundamentally against the plans of Washington.

The JGRN has proposed bilateral treaties with the United States, Honduras, and El Salvador. Such proposals aim to unmask imperialist plots and the subordination of the present regimes to the United States' objectives. The JGRN's diplomatic initiatives are a response to the manoeuvers of Washington which occasionally plays the negotiations card for domestic consumption in the United States, to shore up the counter-revolutionaries' political operations and to avoid over-centrifugal tendencies inside the Latin American states since their seal of approval is useful for its policy of aggression.

In 1982-83, the FSLN correctly gave its support to Contadora initiatives and to its declared aim of finding a "peaceful solution for the region". Nevertheless, it has not failed to express its disagreement with a series of points proposed by the Contadora and its frontal opposition to all proposals implying any type of infringement of Nicaraguan sovereignty or weakening of the revolution (military defence).

It has always expressed doubts on the effectiveness of Contadora given imperialist pressure on client-states deep in financial debt — not to speak of the specific interests of the Latin American bourgeoisie.

Nevertheless, an equals sign should not be placed between the projects of American imperialism and the aims of certain Latin American bourgeoisies. Open conflicts of interests exist and explain the different pressures put on members of the Contadora by the United States, with the aim of modifying or defeating certain of their proposals. When the Nicaraguans signed the proposed agreement in September 1984 — which reaffirmed the right to self-determination, a ban on economic embargos, opposition to all foreign intervention — the United States stepped up its efforts to bring the project to naught. Imperialism's efforts were directed towards a surrender by the FSLN — under cover of the "national dialogue" — through cancellation of the November 1984 elections, new elections under "surveillance", and a legitimation of the contras. All that would have opened the way for an imperialist intervention in the guise of "defending democracy". During this period the technical preparations for a massive intervention were advancing.

Present developments reveal the open crisis of the initial Contadora project, the incapacity of most of its members to really develop a position independent of imperialism and even, with only Mexico showing some opposition, their gradual falling into line with the US.

The FSLN has striven to maintain links with social democracy and take advantage of all the contradictions in the imperialist camp. Its relations with an important sector of social democracy are getting more tense to the extent that the latter is adapting more openly to imperialist policy.

In the context of the worsening confrontation in the region Nicaragua maintains privileged links with Cuba, which has given decisive aid to the Nicaragua people. Nicaragua is developing the option of strategic relations with the Soviet Union — which is presently supplying relatively large material aid — in the framework of a declared policy of "non-alignment". At the same time, in order to fulfil its needs and loosen the noose tightened by the United States, Nicaragua is also trying for an increased diversification of its economic changes and making the "overtures" necessary towards European and Latin American countries.

IV. The Salvadorean revolution

1) In El Salvador a revolutionary upsurge has developed since 1979 which has involved workers, peasants, popular and student struggles, general strikes, semi-insurrections, local insurrections, a guerrilla war, and a civil war. This uprising has been on a scale unprecedented in the history of the region, despite the growing intervention of the United States.

The brutal extension of capitalist relations of production, the extreme concentration of landed property, combined with a high demographic intensity gave birth to a significant rural semi-proletariat and proletariat in El Salvador. Alongside a still very small working class and impoverished artisans it was the motor force of the 1932 proletarian insurrection, which was drowned in blood. The struggles that have developed from the end of the 1970s have inherited this mass hatred of the oligarchy's brutality.

Industry developed especially from the 1960s under the impact of the Central American Common Market. Fertile land became more and more concentrated in the hands of a few families. Then the oligarchy began to differentiate its investments on the basis of money earned from its land. It went into agro-industry, import-export trade, finance, and even industry. Imperialist capital was part of this development which thus gave birth to a few new bourgeois sectors.

The working class emerged strengthened from these transformations. In 1967, a broad general strike marked a first turn in struggles around immediate economic demands.

The rural semi-proletariat and proletariat underwent a terrible process of impoverishment. More and more peasants had no land and no work (in 1975, 41 per cent of peasant families had no land) or became peddlers, sub-proletarians in the towns.

In 1969 the "Football War" between El Salvador and Honduras — which aimed to protect its domestic market — stimulated the crisis of the MCCA (the Central American Common Market). It had repercussions for the Salvadorean oligarchical system. Tens of thousands of Salvadorean peasant emigrants were brutally evicted from Honduras. The Salvadorean ruling class was consequently not just denied an outlet onto a bigger market but also had this "demographic safety valve" blocked.

These new refugees, who occasionally had gone through an experience of trade union struggles in Honduras plantations, organised demonstrations in support of their demands. This was the first time, since 1932, that peasants had invaded the towns.

The "Football War" also provoked a political crisis in the ranks of the left, particularly in the Salvadorean Communist Party (PCS) which had politically supported the government in the military conflict. A turn in the situation began to emerge at the very beginning of the 1970s.

2) From 1970 to 1979 a series of ruptures took place which shaped political parameters for the whole decade: the formation of the politico-military organisations, the creation of the mass peoples organisations, a radicalisation in the Christian community, and the dead end of the electoral "road" was confirmed.

a) In April 1970, a sector of the PCS leadership, linked to the trade union movement, broke with the party to set up a politico-military organisation: the Farabundo Marti People's Liberation Forces (FPL). Coming out of the radicalised Christian layers, the Revolutionary Army of the People (ERP) was also formed in 1970. The first armed actions of these two organisations were carried out in 1972.

So, compared to Nicaragua or Guatemala, the organisations involved in the armed struggle were formed rather late. Certainly they had to respond to the very particular conditions of the country's social structure and geography (small size, population density, the great number of roads and communications, non-existence of "protective mountains") and the 1932 "trauma". In this period the political military thinking of the FPL was the most significant. Its leadership came out of a rich trade union tradition. It understood the need to equip the violence of the fiercely repressed masses with new instruments of struggle. One formulation summed up its ideas: "our mountain is the people." The urban guerrilla experience also stimulated its reflection. Its conception of the armed struggle in the strict sense of the term was the culmination of this whole development of its thinking. It was to link together: the militia (mass instruments of self-defence in the neighbourhoods, workplaces and in preparation for insurrection), the guerrilla forces (a limited force fighting in a fixed zone) and on a higher level, the revolutionary army.

In its early years the ERP was strongly marked by militarist and adventurist positions based on a characterisation of the situation as being revolutionary since 1972. This line cut if off from sectors of the masses and was to be an important element of the 1974 split which resulted in the formation of the Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN-RN). From 1975-6 on the ERP began to adjust its line.

In 1979, despite a series of differences which were left in the background or covered over by ambiguous formulations, a convergence began to develop between the revolutionary organisations around such questions as: self-defence, the guerrilla struggle, the army and the need to link together people's revolutionary war and perspectives of a mass insurrection with the aim of smashing the army and the repressive apparatus. All the organisations emphasised the necessity of having a perspective of taking political power.

b) The mass revolutionary people's organisations appeared in the middle of the 1970s. This showed the need for the masses, affected by a brutal fall in living standards, to find new instruments, new means to stand up to the repression, to overcome a whole battery of legal constraints on the right to strike. Finally these people's organisations sanctioned the failure of the PCS methods in relation to the militancy of the proletariat in the recently formed industries.

The People's United Action Front (FAPU) was formed in 1974; the Revolutionary People's Bloc in 1975 as a result of a split in FAPU and the February 28th People's League (LP 28) in 1977). These organisations were composed of social sectoral groupings, (workers, peasants, shantytown dwellers, teachers, students and school students, peddlers) that existed prior to their formation or which were later built through the revolutionary mass organisation. Each revolutionary people's organisation was linked to a politico-military organization: the BPR to the FPL, the FAPU to the FARN and the LP 28 to the ERP.

Women play an historically unprecedented role in the politico-military organisations and in the mass organisations, including at a leadership level. This reflects the big changes that took place in the university and teaching sectors but also the role of women in the organisation of the struggle against repression in the countryside and the neighbourhoods.

From 1977 to 1979 workers' and peasants' struggles grew in number. The form these mobilisations took was a break with the past: strikes with occupation and self-defence, occupations of the big farms, solidarity strikes, demonstrations in support of struggles, occupations of churches and embassies, mass demonstrations with self-defence and armed actions. These struggles won a certain number of their demands despite the attempts to stifle them and the legalisation of brutal repression.

The revolutionary people's organisations took away the control of the trade union movement from the PCS — except in the building trade union — and brought about a radical reorientation, above all in the United Confederation of Salvadorean Workers (CUTS). State-tied trade unionism declined dramatically and there was impressive progress of the people's organisations in the peasant movement where the PCS was practically absent. By 1978 the politico-military organisations and the mass people's organisations had won hegemony over most of the mass movement. A revolutionary situation was maturing.

C) A "conversion" had taken place in the church which had repercussions particularly in the university and in the countryside. The Christian "base communities" raised the consciousness of a terribly oppressed and exploited peasantry, facilitated the work of revolutionary militants, often from a Christian background, and legitimised their actions in the eyes of the masses.

d) The 1972 elections (presidential), the 1974 elections (local and legislative) and the 1977 elections (presidential) degenerated into open farce. Politics was seen to equal repression.

Reformist political projects, based on the electoral road and concretised in the National Opposition Union (UNO) composed of the Christian Democrats, the Revolutionary National Movement (MNR) claiming Social Democratic affiliations and the National Democratic Union (UDN) linked to the PCS, were seriously floundering. The oligarchy and the key sectors of the army were not ready to make the least concessions to demands for political reform and even less for land reform. This was the sort of explosive situation in which the Nicaraguan revolution erupted in 1979.

3) There was a rapid speeding up of the revolutionary upsurge from October 1979 to the middle of 1980.

a) On 15th October 1979, encouraged by imperialism, a sector of the army made a preventative coup d'etat. It wanted to hold off the rise of the mass movement and cut the ground from under the feet of the revolutionary organisations. While real power remained in the hands of the military, the Junta doled out an apparent power to "honest technicians" or to the PDC or MNR. The PCS-UDN joined this government. The Junta made efforts to open a dialogue with the Foro Popular (people's forum — made up of the PDC, the MNR, the UDN and trade unions) in order to try and occupy the political terrain and to marginalise the popular and revolutionary organisations. A reform programme, rather sweeping on paper, was announced.

October 1979 was a test for the revolutionary organisations. By upsetting this reformist political trap they kept alive revolutionary perspectives. The FPL denounced the coup d'etat as "aiming to divert the masses into an electoral process". The LP 28 immediately left the Foro Popular and the ERP characterised the coup as a "new manoeuvre from imperialism and the oligarchy". The FARN-FAPU hesitated a little and emphasised the internal contradictions of the Junta. Then it attacked the reformist patching up operation. If the revolutionary organisations had supported or participated in the Junta they would have disoriented the masses and facilitated things for imperialist policy. Revolutionaries in El Salvador, not only denounced the reformist dead end, but launched semi-insurrectional military actions and organised demonstrations in support of the masses' demands. The real substance of the Junta's programme was exposed by the combination of these initiatives and the social-economic struggle — instead of the promised reforms the masses were given massacres.

The first Junta from October 1979, which was supported by the Socialist International and the Christian Democratic World Union, and then the second junta from January to March 1980, rapidly came apart at the seams. The independent "technocrats", the MNR, the PCS and then DC representatives left the ship. From March 1980 Duarte's PDC was left alone in the junta with the armed forces but there was no doubt who took the decisions in this junta.

b) A revolutionary crisis was opened in the first quarter of 1980 and the constituent elements for a situation of dual power began to come together. On one side the crisis of bourgeois leadeship deepened. The radical opposition of oligarchic corporatist organisations to the reform policy of the junta and against the Christian Democrats' role, eroded the government's power. Conflicts in the army, relaying the oligarchy's manoeuvres, led to aborted coup d'etats. The PDC fractured. The decreed reforms did not progress at all and resulted in sharpening the intra-bourgeois conflicts. The Junta's action was not much more than generalised repression: state of emergency (March), military occupation of the university and militarisation of the public services (August), state intervention in the trade unions and massacres. The paramilitary oragnisations carried out daily terrorist actions against even Christian Democrats. All this contributed to the international political isolation of the Junta.

On the other side, the revolutionary organisations knew how to exploit even the limited space opened up immediately after October 1979. They asserted their political presence. The people's organisations recruited and built up their implantation. They held the centre of the political scene, relegating the democratic, reformist opposition forces to a secondary role. Mass struggles, despite the massacres, became extremely powerful and reached a high point during the second quarter of 1980. On 17th March a general strike called by the revolutionary people's organisations paralysed 70 per cent of the country's economic activity. After the assassination of Archbishop of San Salvador, Mgr. Romero (on 24 March), an eight-day strike was called. On 24 June a political general strike paralysed nearly the whole country. It posed de facto the question of power. The 13-14th August general strike was seen as a turning point. It combined aspects of a general strike with military actions and an insurrectional dynamic in the outer neighbourhoods of the capital. However, participation in the strike was more limited than in June. Mass terrorism, militarisation of society, and the counter-offensive of the army, where the most extreme right wing was cracking the whip, did have an influence on the population. In November 1980, the assassination of the official representatives of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR) by the paramilitary forces symbolised the end of this phase of the revolution.

c) from February 1980, the revolutionary camp began to organise united political structures, which increased its authority and influenced the mass upsurge.

The BPR, FAPU, LP 28, and UDN set up the Mass Revolutionary Coordination (CRM) in February. Its programme set down that the struggle for power was on the agenda. There was no doubt about its objectives.

The decisive tasks of the revolution, on which achieving all its tasks and aims depends, is the conquest of power and the establishment of a revolutionary government which will begin leading the people to build a new society. The democratic revoluitionary government will include representatives of the revolutionary and people's movement and democratic parties, organisations, sectors and personalities willing to participate in the realisation of this programme.

This government will base itself on a broad social and political basis formed in the first place by the working class, peasants and progressive middle layers; closely linked to the latter there are all the social layers open to the application of thjis programme: small and medium-sized industrial entrepreneurs, shop-keepers, artisans, and agricultural producers (small and medium...)

In addition to social, economic and democratic tasks (nationalisation of monopolistic sectors, radical land reform), it emphasises immediate political tasks, the creation of a

'popular army built up in the course of the revolutionary process,' ... in which can be incorporated elements of the soldiers, under officers, officers and chiefs of the present army who correctly conduct themselves and reject foreign intervention against the revolutionary process and support the liberation struggle of our people.

In April 1980 the FDR (Revolutionary Democratic Front) was set up — made up of the MNR, the Social Christian People's Movement (MPSC), a split from the PDC and the previously regrouped forces — on the basis of the CRM programme, expressing the political hegemony won by the revolutionary organisations. These structures were completed at the end of May by the formation of the Unified Revolutionary Leadership (DRU), which represented the first step in the difficult unification of the command structures of the politico-military organisations.

d) The present leadership of the FMLN considers it missed a "favorable opportunity" to struggle for power throughout these months of 1980. The following weaknesses characterised the way the revolutionary forces carried out this struggle. Examining this period makes it possible to draw out some of the key aspects of this lost opportunity.

A lack of synchronisation existed between the powerful upsurge and demands of the popular struggles and the construction of the united front of the revolutionary organisations.

This united front was only achieved with some delay and with a limited political content in terms of strategy and tactics. This belated unity nevertheless had to be achieved in a short period of time, with all the consequent complications in terms of responding to crucial questions in such a conjuncture: leading general strikes, working to divide the army, tactical alliances, the planned co-ordination and concentration of still relatively limited military resources, a common revolutionary diplomacy to aid the struggle, etc.

An instrument that had been essential for the revolutionaries in their winning the hegemony over the toiling masses, the mass fronts, became transformed into an obstacle for the building up of united front bodies at the base. There are two reasons for this: on the one hand the sectarianism which still reigned between the organisations; on the other hand the conception they had of their relations with the mass movement which neglected struggle for unity at the base in favour of the tight control of each of their organisations over sectors of the mass movement. The top-level unity as well as the strength of the organisations had been sufficient for calling and organising extraordinarily widescale general strikes. But differences of tactical and strategic orientation and the non-existence of united bodies at the base undermined the preparation of the insurrection. Furthermore, the absence of united front committees meant the differences between the organisations was felt more strongly among the masses and there was no pressure for unity from the base to the leadership.

In this framework the case of the PCS is interesting. True it has carried out a drastic turn — it had to to survive — by joining the CRM and by beginning to carry out the armed struggle and in giving up a strategy that assigned a leading role to the bourgeoisie in a "first phase of the revolution". It declared the necessity of "taking the power away from the bourgeoisie by destroying its bureaucratic-military apparatus" and the present-day relevance of the socialist revolution. Nevertheless, it still justifies its 1979 government participation, saying that it was necessary "to go along with the democratic forces up to the moment when the project failed so as to avoid dispersal after the rout." It also continues to give an important place in its strategy to "democratic sectors of the army" and did not rule out a strategic agreement with them.

4) The last months of 1980 were characterised by an increased militarisation and the FMLN's preparation for the January 1981 offensive.

After September 1980, the traditional reactionary sectors had regained complete control of the army. Military collaboration with the Guatemalan and Honduran armies was resumed under the aegis of the United States. The latter prevented the economic collapse of El Salvador and put Duarte in the presidency of the Republic (December 1980) — the first civilian president for 49 years — in order to make the regime more presentable diplomatically.

On their side the revolutionary forces consolidated their military potential. They moved out many cadres from mass work (increasingly difficult given the repression) to military activity, in the perspective of a direct assault. They carried out military occupations of towns to prepare the incorporation of the population in a future insurrection. The DRU forces had drawn the lessons of the past and wanted to profit from the political situation in the United States (1980 elections). They made progress on unity, encouraged on this path by the Castroist leadership, and in October 1980 they set up the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN). It replaced the DRU and broadened to include the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (PRTC). A general high command was set up with a representative from each of the five organisations. A consensus emerged on the preparation of a general military offensive, initially defined as the "final" offensive.

The offensive was launched on 10th January 1981. The most violent battles lasted eight days. However, as early as 14th January the FMLN organised the retreat. The "final" offensive had failed but the FMLN did not come out of it defeated or militarily crushed. Two factors explain the significance and results of this offensive:

• It was late in relation to the highest point reached by the mass movement in the middle of 1980. From that moment on the military's hold over the capital and the main towns was considerably strengthened. Terror and the displacement of revolutionary cadres had weakened mass work.

• The insurrectional pushes in the barrios of the capital were not backed up and relayed by a large-scale general strike. It was more difficult for the mass movement to display its militancy since revolutionary military protection was insufficient. A chain reaction of partial local insurrections did not take place.

Furthermore, concentrating military attacks on the barracks, in order to strike very hard blows against the enemy, took up big forces and left a greater freedom of movement to the counter-revolutionary army. Finally, the FMLN military forces were little co-ordinated and the hoped-for uprisings and mutinies in the barracks did not happen. After January 1981 a real civil war began.

5) During the phase from January 1981 to March-June 1982 both the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary forces reorganised their structures and plans of action.

a) Militarily speaking the scope of the January 1981 offensive made possible an advance in the accumulation of the military forces and experience. Up to the middle of 1981 the FMLN nevertheless was constrained to defend its positions. It neutralised the "sweep" operations of an army seeking a quick knockout. Through this battle, the different forces of the FMLN were able to conquer zones of control — not liberated zones — allowing them to improve the training of their troops, to deal with supply problems, to set up bases to plan future offensives, transmit radio broadcasts (Radio Venceremos) and to begin to build a real people' army. The peasant masses of these "controlled zones" were gradually organised, both to defend themselves and to orient their economic activity to war needs. This is what the FPL called local people's power (PPL).

From the end of the second quarter of 1981, the FMLN was able to go back onto the offensive. It attacked garrisons, took over certain towns (Perquin), damaged strategic infrastructure (el Puente de Oro) and attacked the Ilopango airbase (January 1982). The military pressure on the towns was stepped up at the beginning of 1982 and paved the way for the March 1982 military campaign, the FMLN response to the elections.

b) These March 1982 legislative elections, made in the USA, did not represent a victory of the latter. The USA had banked on the PDC/armed forces pact. However the PDC was relegated to a secondary role through an alliance inside parliament between the Party of National Conciliation (PCN), historic party of the oligarchy and the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). The oligarchy and its allies had backed this latter political formation (recently formed and fascistic) in order to oppose any reforms and to react against the Junta's inability to smash the FMLN. Indeed the ARENA organises a "popular base" and has an armed wing (the death squads). The crisis of bourgeois leadership therefore got sharper.

Massive, open fraud, the electoral advance of the ARENA and the military capacity of the FMLN to a large extent neutralised the usefulness of these elections for the United States. Nevertheless they were held. A part of the population had voted (about 50 per cent) even if many people were intimidated. The elections brought out into the open and convulsions at work in the bourgeois camp and the malaise of certain sectors of the population. Outside of its military offensive the FMLN offered a rather lame response.

On the one hand the thinking behind this new offensive continued in many respects the conception of the January 1981 offensive. The idea of a more or less short-term victory, in an insurrectional perspective, combined with decisive military actions hastening the decomposition of the army was still the strategic tradition of the main FMLN forces — outside of the differences they had on the combination of these various elements and on the more precise pace of their practical realisation. The Nicaraguan revolution had very much influenced the "strategic schema" of the FMLN. The inadequacies of this hypothetical schema for El Salvador were increasingly apparent.

On the other hand the FMLN as a whole judged correctly that the 1982 elections did not provide imperialism with a solution. But its various components were not agreed on the tactical action proposals to be adopted (military boycott or political denunciation). The result of this was clear: the FMLN did not have a political position as the FMLN on the question of the elections.

Three themes came out strongly from the discussion inside the FMLN following the March 1982 experience:

• How to aid sectors of the people condemned to silence by "state terrorism" to express, in one form or another, their support for the FMLN? The weakness of the FMLN in this conjuncture did not lie only in military inadequacies.

• How introduce splits and divisions among political forces permitting the broadening of the camp of opposition to the regime/imperialism coalition, given the increased intervention of the United States, the role of ARENA, the economic crisis and bourgeois leadership crisis? This meant raising the problem of alliances, of an opening of the FDR towards forces like those grouped in the Democratic People's Union (UPD), formed in 1980. The UPD is made up of the Salvadorean Communal Union (UCS), the building trade union (Fesincontrans), associations of small industrialists and shopkeepers etc. It supports the PDC but also expresses the support of these sectors for reforms, their opposition to blind oppression and an openness to "dialogue".

• Agreement was reached inside the FMLN on the need to consolidate its military force in order to give new confidence to the masses who were disconcerted in some cases by the results of the two previous offensives (January 1981 and March 1982) and to strike new blows against the army. Indeed the United States had opted to rebuild the Salvadorean army: special battalions trained in the United States, reorganisation of the command structures and involvement of American officers in the direct conduct of the war.

c) On the diplomatic level the Reagan administration tried, on the one hand, to revive regional agreements between the bourgeoisies (Democratic Central American Community) and, on the other hand, to justify its intervention by presenting the Salvadorean revolution as the fruit of "Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan interference".

This project was conjuncturally counterbalanced by the Franco-Mexican declaration (August 1981) and Lopez Portillo's (Mexican president) peace proposals. The FMLN thus won diplomatic status internationally, even if the Franco-Mexican declaration was to be vigorously attacked by the Southern Cone dictatorships and Venezuela and Colombia — under pressure from the United States (Caracas Manifesto, September 1981).

From the end of 1981 the FMLN turned negotiations into a weapon of struggle. It showed that war and negotiations are not antagonistic, but can be complementary. Internationally they hammered away correctly at one idea: there is "no solution to the conflict without the FMLN-FDR." In October 1981, Nicaragua offered it a platform at the UN to present its "peace proposal" demanding the opening of negotiations without conditions between the FMLN-FDR and the Junta in the presence of governments as witnesses.

6) From the end of the first quarter of 1982 to just before the March 1984 presidential elections, the course of the Salvadorean revolution was characterised by: a growing FMLN offensive military capacity; continually stepped up American imperialist aid to shore up the regime and its army; a serious crisis in the FPL; a redefinition of the FMLN-FDR political platform and finally, by the recovery of still modest movements around socio-economic demands in the towns.

a) Since June 1982 the FMLN increasingly determines the reactions of the counter-revolution army by surprise offensives concentrated on specific objectives. Thus it can: inflict defeats on whole companies of soldiers; increase its recuperation of arms; make the movements of the army more difficult; develop a policy towards government soldiers who have been captured or have surrendered; temporarily occupy relatively important towns; better co-ordinate operations on the various fronts each of which remains linked to one of the FMLN organisations.

From the middle of 1983, imperialism got its "military/civilian operations" underway (the CONARA plan — National Commission for the restoration of the zones). They aimed to eliminate the social base of support for the revolutionary forces (bombings, moving the population, civilian patrols and small, mobile military units).

Nevertheless, in September 1983, the FMLN succeeded in upsetting imperialist plans once again. It took over the third biggest town (San Miguel) of the country, an important barracks (El Paraiso) and three departments were now almost completely under its control.

These military actions are no longer placed in a short term insurrectional perspective, a "final battle". Their function is to keep the initiative in the revolutionaries' hands. They prove to the population that the dictatorship is losing control over an increased part of its territory. They also: weaken the army and counter-balance the effects of US aid given to recompose it, boost recruitment to the FMLN and aim to modify the relationship of forces and make a shift in the situation. It was on the basis of the priority given to these military efforts that the FMLN general command placed its political and diplomatic initiatives in January 1984.

Two key questions are posed by the very logic of the way this war is unfolding:

• The increased intervention of the United States, which corresponds to the inability of the Salvadorean army to fulfil its counter-revolutionary function without being taken in hand by imperialism, means that the civil war increasingly takes on a dimension of a war of national liberation.

• How to establish a relationship between the progress made on a military level, the action of the masses outside the FMLN zones of control and a response on the political level.

The discussion opened up in the FMLN after March 1982 was bound to spring to life again.

b) The government of "national unity" set up by Alvaro Magana after the March 1982 elections went through crisis after crisis. The presidential elections planned for 1983 by the United States had to be postponed to 1984. The second phase of the so-called land reforms was put in the bottom drawer.

, In this context, the UPD contained the socio-economic protests of the small- and medium-sized peasants (September 1983). It also filled a vacuum left by the diminishing presence of the FMLN in the towns. The fall of purchasing power of wage earners and the fierce super-exploitation meant that strikes broke out in the public administration and the workplaces. A limited trade union reorganisation took place with the birth of the unitary trade union and the Profession Movement of El Salvador (MUSYGES) in May 1983.

The FMLN forces were far from being able to broadly influence this protest movement. In the towns the loss of cadres from the mass movement and the effects of the civil war has modified the relationship of forces. The channels of expression the workers were forced to use were often linked to bourgeois parties or petty-bourgeois organisations. Wage demands, democratic demands and the "desire for peace" now have an important role to play. This is not incidentally in contradiction with having sympathy for the FMLN activity in the civil war.

c) The FMLN kept up its politico-diplomatic pressure. It unmasked the US and government manoeuvre of the Peace Commission set up by the Junta to get a "dialogue without direct negotiations" going and to put out a line to try and get one sector of the FMLN-FDR to participate in future elections. The FMLN raised three questions with this commission: the withdrawal of the United States from El Salvador, the opening of a dialogue on Salvadorean territory, the conditions for a ceasefire and participation in elections. The Peace Commission was mandated only to discuss participation in elections. But, for the FMLN, any such participation is only to be envisaged after the setting up of a "government of broad participation" (September 1983 Declaration in Colombia).

This government proposal became an important element of the political and diplomatic response of the FMLN-FDR. At the end of January 1984, with the elections of March 1984 coming up, it presented the proposal of forming a "Provisional Government of broad participation" (GAP) and a platform of tasks. The most "immediate tasks of this provisional government are:

• destroy the repressive apparatus;

• dissolve the security police, the death squads and their political organisation, the ARENA party;

• send home the North American advisors, stop the military intervention and aid as well as all arms supplies in the country;

• after a full inquiry bring the civilians and military personnel responsible for genocide, political crimes, torture, kidnappings, violations of individual rights, to justice;

• restore all democratic rights;

• (a series) of fundamental social and economic reforms in order to transform existing structures.

As an end result of this process conditions will be created for "preparing and organising general elections".

Agreement on the tasks of this government which is "not due to last long" and on the time scale and means for their implementation will determine the creation of government structures.

This process must end up in the organisation of a single national army, formed by the FMLN forces and the armed forces of the present government after they have been purged. The FMLN and government forces will keep their arms until the end of negotiations...

Representatives of the workers' movement, of the peasants', teachers', professional associations, white-collar workers, university organisations, political parties, private property owners, the FMLN and the reconstructed armed forces must be in this government.

The oligarchy, sectors and personalities and sectors opposed to the objectives of this government or proposing the maintenance of the dictatorship will be excluded from this government.

No single force will dominate this government, all the social and political forces in favour of the overthrow of the oligarchy's regime, of the reestablishment of national sovereignty and independence and of private property and foreign investment not contradicting society's interests, will be represented in it.

The FMLN-FDR's offer of negotiations is not a substitute for military action, it goes hand in hand with it. It specifically precludes the FMLN laying down is arms before "successful negotiations" which must be held in two phases: "a direct and unconditional dialogue must precede the negotiations". This initiative is part of an anti-imperialist framework of "defence of independence, national sovereignty and right to self-determination". This is based on a judgement concerning the nature of the political offensive being jointly carried out by the US, the army and Duarte, the dynamic of the ever-broader intervention of the US and the possible regionalisation of the conflict and the transformation of El Salvador into a sort of American protectorate. This platform marks a change — which has been seen to be coming for some time — compared to the 1980 programme for the seizure of power in the short term, a change that has to be integrated into the national and international framework.

d) In April 1983, a dramatic crisis broke out inside the FPL leadership with the assassination of Ana Maria and the suicide of Marcial.

Thus once again methods were used to sort out internal differences which have already caused great harm to the Salvadorean revolution. The extreme difficulties of the military struggle, the militarisation of the organisations and the manoeuvres of the enemy forces provide the framework for these tragic events. But no objective condition or "necessity of the struggle against the class enemy", can justify the use of such methods in the ranks of the workers' movement. The various FPL and FMLN communiques "explaining" the events not only changed several times their version of what happened but brought in serious accusations without providing proof nor (above all) political explanations worthy of the stakes involved in this revolution. In this sense they are unacceptable.

Since 1982, the debate in the FPL has been focused on the following questions:

• The articulation between the workers' and peasants alliance and alliances with other social sectors and the problem of proletarian hegemony in these alliances.

• The composition of the government that has been proposed for a political solution and the inter-relation between the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle.

• The development and forms of mass urban work; the conception of work aimed at weakening the enemy army and how to take advantage of internal contradictions which could emerge in it; the role of diplomatic struggle in the revolution and its relations with the armed struggle and political struggle.

In fact all these differences took on a particular sharpness once they became immediately related to the problems of building a unified organisation and consequently with the place each of the present FMLN currents, among others, the PCS forces, would have in it.

In September 1983, the plenary council of the FPL announced the election of a new leadership. It pointed out the two key tasks it had set: "intensifying the revolutionary peoples struggles in all its political, military, and diplomatic aspects in the perspective of establishing a government of broad popular participation" and "to dedicate all efforts to the struggle against intervention, for the legitimate defence of national sovereignty and the peoples' right to self-determination faced with the growing interventionist policy of the Reagan administration".

The debate inside the FPL resulted in a significant division giving birth to two groupings, the Revolutionary Workers Movement (MOR) and the Clara Elizabeth Front, which are outside of the FPL. The MOR and the Frente make a connection between the turn made by the FPL, "the excessive verticalist functioning of the Political Commission", and various international organisational pressures which, according to them, are being put on the FPL and FMLN. The MOR, like the Clara Elizabeth Front, identify with what they consider the original orientation of the FPL — the "prolonged peoples' war" line. They also claim continuity with the initial project of making the FPL the only revolutionary proletarian party of the FMLN and consequently these two groupings carry out a series of sectarian and maximalist criticisms that avoid giving a response in terms of a concrete political orientation to the present problems of the Salvadorean revolution.

7) For American imperialism, the Salvadorean Presidential elections of March/May 1984 had three functions:

• Provide a legal and democratic cover behind which to organise a new military escalation against the revolutionary forces;

• End the relative isolation of the Salvadorean government internationally and combine more closely the war and diplomatic pressure;

• Try to modify the relationship of forces between ARENA and the PDC, and thus to increase the effectiveness of Duarte's counter-revolutionary policy and a remodelled army, in the framework of a more effective "reformist counter-insurgency" project.

The FMLN-FDR denounced this electoral farce, but it did not turn the election into a target for military actions — apart from the ERP which took some initiatives of this sort. But the FMLN refused to declare a military truce during this period. The growth of the territory under its control in comparison with March 1982 is shown by the fact that the government found it impossible to organise the ballot in 89 municipal areas (34 per cent) of all municipal areas).

a) Throughout the first three months of 1984 the Pentagon and the Salvadorean military command tried to bring together electoral victories and military ones. They concentrated on "air surveillance" in order to prevent the concentration of FMLN troops and to facilitate the pursuit of its units. Bombing the civilian population in the FMLN zones of control was sharply stepped up.

Despite the lack of technical resources, the revolutionary forces were able to defend themselves and even to fight back. Economic sabotage (energy, transport, agro-exports) held an important place in their activity. They even took over the heavily-defended Cerro Grande dam (June 1984) and developed actions in new regions.

One conclusion emerges clearly: the Salvadorean army, which has doubled in size since 1981, cannot defeat the peoples' army. On the one side, the counter-revolutionary army faces serious difficulties in dealing with the incompetence of more than one command structure; corruption; the permanent turnover of its troops; desertions and a low fighting spirit. On the other side the logistical support and the structured US aid at all levels does make it possible for it to carry out a counterinsurgency war, with a very high cost for the rural population, and to maintain a more consistent military pressure aiming to take away the tactical initiative from the FMLN by trying to dislodge it from the "controlled zones" and particularly by making it very difficult to concentrate troops. The nature of the American intervention narrows the margin for imperialism between the option of inflicting a qualitative weakening on the FMLN by basing itself on a Pentagon-led Salvadorean army and that of a direct, massive intervention.

b) American imperialism is mounting an intensive campaign to get international diplomatic support for the new Duarte government. The World Christian Democratic Union ensures it the support of many European bourgeoisies. International Social Democracy has looked on benevolently and has legitimised its election, just as Mexico has. These operations are supposed to facilitate its task of taking the banner of the "peaceful solution" out of the FMLN-FDR's hands.

But a series of contradictions are undermining Duarte's regime:

• It is difficult for it to satisfy the demands of both the national association of private entrepeneurs (ANEP) and the social economic movements of protest which are becoming more extensive (strikes in the public sector, the post office, teachers, water workers, etc.) The same potential conflict exists on the land reform question. All this will have repercussions inside the UPD and make relatioins with the PDC more tense.

• The institutional and political crisis will continue and there will be more and more conflicts between the Duarte government and the ultra right-wing bloc (Arena).

• The democratic facade that Duarte wants to put on the army won't deceive people for very long.

• The ruin of the economy, combined with structural obstacles, removes any credibility from the reformist populist measures and an economic recovery.

For the United States, the Duarte government appears as the last card to play before having to opt for invasion. To consolidate a bloc of Duarte and the army command, based on control of as many as possible of the national and local institutions, represents the most worthwhile option for imperialism.

Tactically, Duarte and his American advisors are seeking to divide the ranks of the FMLN-FDR by putting in the window a possible participation of the "political wing" in some vague elections. The Socialist International and the Latin American boureoisies are relaying this manoeuvre with the following argument: a truce, understood as a stage towards laying down arms would create the ideal conditions for dialogue. In fact, for American imperialism, only the qualitative weakening of the FMLN-FDR, its total defeat is what counts; that is the precondition for effective negotiations.

The FMLN-FDR firmly rejects Duarte's proposals and declares the need "to go forward with the war" and the "economic and social and political struggles" as long as imperialism and the government maintain their present positions. The five FMLN commanders have publicly insisted on the minimum conditions which would create "the favourable and necessary climate for dialogue": the end of direct North American participation in the war, an immediate halt to bombings of the civilian population, the freeing of political prisoners and the elimination of torture, assassinations and "disappearances".

8) Discussion since 1982 inside the FMLN and more particularly in the FPL relate on the one hand to changes in the development of the revolution since January 1981 and on the other hand to the transitional situation between a civil war and a war of national liberation given the decisive intervention of imperialism in El Salvador and the Central American isthmus.

a) The FMLN is confronted with a series of important problems for the future of the revolution:

• The social and human costs of the war, the inevitable wearing down of layers of the population and their desire for a "just peace".

• The direct political and diplomatic efforts of imperialism, which, as opposed to the Nicaraguan situation of 1978-9 is in the front line in the management of the conflict.

• The possible emergence of contradictions between a social sector linked, among others, to the UPD, but outside of it too, and the present government; the recovery of the urban mass movement which is a long way from having the dynanism or the means of expression that existed in 1980.

In this context, for the FMLN to lead forward the revolutionary war, it has to offer a political solution and to take the initiative in the field of negotiations. A series of urgent tasks flow from this:

• Ensure the intervention of the FMLN-FDR on the political terrain so as to put into question the result imperialism has been looking for with the elections and the establishment of the Duarte government.

• To broaden the front struggling against the policy of the US, the armed forces and the oligarchy, by gathering social sectors coming into opposition to the Duarte government's policy around the FDR. To gain political space in order to get back more solidly into the urban mass movement.

• Keep the task of dividing the counter-revolutionary army.

• Develop diplomatic activity in order to increase the political difficulties for American imperialism's regional escalation.

The January 1984 programme cannot thus be looked at apart from the questions facing the FMLN and the masses in a framework different from that of 1980. It aims to respond to these problems. Any judgement we make on the real dynamic of an orientation of negotiations for the formation of the GAP must take into account the obstinate refusal of the United States of a dialogue — which would put the question US presence — with the FMLN-FDR as belligerent party, the similar attitude taken by all the dominant forces of the Salvadoran bourgeoisie, the social, political and moral polarisation and the existence of a people's army and controlled zones. Any judgement on the function of such a programme must be linked to the present practice of the FMLN. Obviously the evolution of the relationship of forces inside the FMLN-FDR itself — a relationship which is not independent of the state of the class struggle and the military situation and the enormous international pressure focused on EL Salvador — is an element of the way in which the line developed since 1983 has been concretised.

b) The FMLN has made negotiation proposals while maintaining a sustained military effort.

It seeks to unify in the eyes of the masses, on the one hand a political proposal for "overturning the old oligarchical society and its client state" and on the other hand, given imperialist and Duarte's policy to continue the people's war. It is calling all those who "voted for peace in voting for Duarte" and whose anti-imperialist reflexes can sharpen under the effects of a war which seems to have no solution due to the blockage of the United States and their man Duarte.

The importance given to democratic and anti-imperialist demands — compared to the 1980 programme — corresponds to a requirement of the revolutionary struggle in the present phase. The whole pyramid of the power of the bourgeois forces rests on the keystone of imperialist aid. "Send back the North American advisors, stop the intervention and the military aid" is just as decisive as the battle against any imperialist interference in the Cuban or Nicaraguan revolutionary process.

"Dissolving the repressive bodies" and "ARENA", the political stronghold of the oligarchy, amounts to breaking up of one of its vital bases of support. This is laid down as an initial point for any real process of negotiation. It is a case of responding to a deep-held sentiment among broad popular layers who look around for a safe corner both in the oligarchical sytem and in the political plan outline by Duarte.

Consolidating popular action cannot be done just through immediate demands. The objective is to give this movement, starting from its reality, a dynamic of political confrontation with the practical policies of the present government. To do this it has to be offered an overall perspective which links democratic, anti-imperialist and immediate economic demands. That is the way to throw off balance the leaderships of the popular organisations who want to subordinate the activity of the masses to the needs of the regime. The GAP platform can have this sort of effect, although it gives no response at all — but this is not its function — to the thorny problem of mass work in the towns.

The nationalisation of the "monopolistic" enterprises has disappeared from the 1984 platform. But on this terrain the real question is whether there is a commitment to satisfying the needs of the enormous mass of landless and impoverished peasants who are the fundamental basis of support for the revolutionary process. The GAP programme calls for the establishment of a complete land reform "guaranteeing the free participation of the rural workers in its implementation". It is the real substance of this land reform which is important.

Reducing the scope of the expropriation demands in the GAP platform corresponds to an attempt to broaden the alliance(s). Two questions are superimposed here and must not be confused.

The first is that of the very conception of alliances. The reality of the class struggle reduces to the extreme any substantial sectors of the bourgeoisie willing to play the same game as a Robelo. In practice, the alliance policy is oriented more towards the layers of the petty and medium bourgeoisie, or very small layers of the bourgeoisie opposed to the oligarchy, towards sectors like the UPD. The formulation concerning the composition of the GAP, at the level of the social forces, further responds to this reality. The policy of alliances cannot be conditioned, as the MOR appears to say, by a priori conquest of a new hegemony over the popular movement. On the contrary, it is a lever to broaden once again the FMLN-FDR influence among these layers and to combine it with their own politico-military forces. In the same way it cannot be separated from an overall political proposal.

The second is that of the essential problem of the army. The GAP formulations on this point are very ambiguous and mark the most substantial change from the 1980 platform. Such formulations might just be a question of tactics — in this sense entirely similar formulations were used in October 1981 in the negotiations proposals made at the UN.

But these formulations can also find an echo in the more consistent line of some sectors of the FMLN on the alliance with the "healthy sectors of the army" not in the sense of speeding up its decomposition but to try and get an institutional agreement with these sectors. Such a position could fit into an actual project of a transitional stage at the level of power — as opposed to what concretely took place in Nicaragua — before the establishment of the power of the workers, peasants and their allies.

In the concrete world of the civil war in El Salvador, this proposal is a matter, at the best, of tactics in relation to possible conflicts in the army, at the worst, it can produce confusion. The practical rejection of a real prolonged truce and of dumping arms — that is, the refusal to subordinate the struggle to negotiations and to conceive them as an auxiliary instruments for the struggle — the emphasis put on the dissolution of the repressive bodies, the unconditional rejection of the American presence, the very forms proposed by the negotiation process, all that relativises the significances of this proposal of integrating a "purged army" and the FMLN troops.

The danger of such a proposal would make itself felt if it were the case that it began to alter the practice of the FMLN and led to significant splits in the present FMLN leadership.

The Soviet bureaucracy deals with the Salvadoran revolution in the framework of its own interests in relation to imperialism. It seeks to increase its control over the Central American revolution by placing its aid where it can draw the best advantage. In function of international developments — the combination of growing military pressure in the region, the difficulties faced by the revolution in Central America, the evolution of discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union — it could try to use a relay like the PCS leadership to exert pressure, in a direction convenient to its interests.

c) The two meetings in autumn 1984 (La Palma and Ayagualo) between representatives of the Duarte government and the FMLN-FDR confirm the orientation of the revolutionary forces. Duarte was not able to take them offguard with his proposal of negotiations. This was made, in part, under the pressure of international factors, but also in taking account of the movement around wage demands, by the UDP base and middle layers, who saw no possibility of a stabilisation, or any sort of economic upturn without the participation of the FMLN-FDR. It thus also had an electoral objective (legislative elections in 1985).

Nevertheless, Duarte and his advisors are banking on a military weakening of the FMLN. This would make it possible for them to engage in negotiations with the revolutionary forces, no longer having effective control over entire regions of the country (a dual power situation). This project rapidly appeared without foundation, whatever the military difficulties of the FMLN-FDR, which must rejig its military strategy in order to deal with the joint operations by the Salvadoran army and its American advisers (aerial bombardment and surveillance, helicopter-lifted troops, telecommunications, etc).

During the two meetings, the FMLN-FDR emphasised the social significance of peace, the need for national sovereignty (departure of American advisers), respect for democratic rights, dismantling the special units of repression. The Front continues its military actions, without mechanically subordinating them to the negotiations. Its revolutionary capacities are demonstrated once more at the politico-militiary plane, despite the extreme difficulties in which it is immersed.

The military relationship of forces that are still in force, the political difficulties of the Duarte government, the military policy of the central command and the Americans, the FMLN-FDR's capacity to politically use the opening of negotiations, indicate that Duarte could only give up on this manoeuvre for the time being.

d) The question of unity has been — and still is — at the centre of the discussion inside the FMLN. The traditions of sectarianism have had devastating effects in the revolutionary camp in El Salvador. Division has had negative repercussions on the mass movement, on the process of self-organisation and the carrying out of military operations. Sectarian methods of discussion — as the confrontation between the FPL and the MOR/Frente Clara Elizabeth continues to show us — are a factor weakening the revolutionary movement.

Revolutionary war requires a united military command. At the same time the needs of the mass movement makes urgent a centralised effort for setting up unified rank and file structures, able to draw on and lead the potential for militancy that exists.

Developing a united process at the level of the mass movement and at the level of military command and operations is an indispensable means for achieving the objective of creating a unified revolutionary party. The simple existence of a front has been shown to be inadequate to the present needs of the revolution.

The historical trajectory of the organisations and the "compartmentalising" of their politico-military influence makes a unification which respects the contribution of each organisation and makes it possible to go beyond that is a difficult and delicate question. Unification cannot be imposed. Even less can it be a monolothic party — except at the cost of splits and elimination of democratic internal functioning (within the limits imposed by war conditions). Rejection of such a monolithic party is a necessary factor for a real fusion and for defeating divisive manoeuvres. Today the FMLN declares it is advancing in a "long process of synthesis" which should lead to a higher level of unity.

V. The revolution in Guatemala

1) Guatemala, because of its geographic position, the size of its population (about 8 million), its economic weight, its resources (oil, nickel), the strength of its counter-revolutionary army, and the history and gains of the revolutionary forces, is a decisive link in the confrontation between revolution and counter-revolution in Central America.

Imperialist efforts to "put out the fire in the United States' backyard" (Reagan) include a stepping up of the counter-revolutionary effort in Guatemala, in concert with the Guatemalan military. The coup (8th August 1983) which sent General Rios Montt back to his Bible studies — after he had taken power in March 1982 — and replaced him by General Meíja Victores, was part of the imperialist plans which combine political and military aspects in an overall "counter-insurgency" plan.

Towards the end of the Second World War (the 1944 "revolution"), Guatemala experienced a broad surge of the mass movement and an exceptional period of democratic openings (the government of Juan José Arévalo 1945-1950, and of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz 1950-54), in comparison with most Central American countries.

It was in this context, where the government forces were trying to slacken the imperialist hold a little, that the mass movement carried out some significant struggles, organised and won some rights (the 1947 Labour Code for example). While the increase in the rate of workers' organisation (industrial and agricultural workers, service- and public-sector employees) was significant, the objective limits in the development of the proletariat at this period should be taken into account.

The agrarian reform promulgated in 1952 paved the way for large-scale expropriation of land either with compensation equivalent to the declared fiscal value (obviously under-estimated by the proprietors) or by the confiscation of land lying fallow. The agro-business giant, United Fruit, was hit by these measures. Whatever the limits of this land reform, it indicated that the political and social process underway represented a threat to American imperialism and the Guatemalan oligarchy. A coup d'état was organised to overthrow the Arbenz government in June 1954.

A long period of systematic repression of the toiling masses and their organisations then commenced. The army was in the front line of this. It took matters more and more in hand, particularly with the advent of the government of Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio (1970). Significant sections of the military hierarchy used their position in the state apparatus and the direct running of the government to accumulate capital (goods and real estate) and change their social position. They thus entered the leading economic circles of the country.

What arose from this situation was not only the particular role of the state sector in the economy and a partial recomposition of the ruling class, but also potentially increasing internal tensions within the army and within the ruling circles.

2) One of the striking features of the structure of the Guatemalan economy was the co-existence (and partial complementarity) of a capitalist export agriculture based on the latifundia, an extraction industry (mines, oil), and small-scale agriculture — particularly in the mountain region — which occupied the bulk of the Indian masses. They lived almost completely isolated from the capitalist market.

Since the beginning of the 1960s, following the example of other Central American countries, a change has occurred. This has happened under the impact of lively economic growth, stimulated by the MCCA among other factors. The spread of capitalist relations of production speeded up, with its concomitant: the slow disintegration of pre-capitalist social relations, and introduction of the use of money among increasing layers of the population (decline in self-sufficiency). From this point, the mass of peasants were to be increasingly subject to the fluctuations of the economic cycle, the hazards of the conjuncture.

Even though it was distorted and increased social inequality, the economic growth of Guatemala was the steepest in Central America. It reached its culminating point in 1980. At this point an economic downturn set in.

The social consequences of this so-called modernisation of Guatemalan society were considerable. The bourgeoisie was socially strengthened, and the relationship of forces between its different components (agrarian, industrial, even financial, the section from the army...) modified. This change did not take place without internal tensions, nor without a need to reshape the forms of rule — above and beyond the recognised priority of crushing the mass movement and liquidating the military forces of the revolution.

At the same time, the proletariat grew in size in the industrial sector (food, chemicals, light manufacturing industry, extraction industry), the agricultural exports sector (sugar, cotton, bananas) and subordinate sectors. The urban semi-proletarianised layers grew rapidly. This proletariat was socially consolidating without having any elementary economic rights. It was constantly faced with a murderously determined machine of repression.

3) The economic crisis hit Guatemala at full blast. There was a drastic fall in production in 1982-83 and 1984. Production suddenly found itself once again at 1972-74 levels. All the structural weaknesses of a dominated, dependent capitalist economy, closely linked to the price fluctuations of exported goods with only a limited domestic market, were thrown into relief.

The flight of capital that began before the 1980 downturn, for social-political reasons, increased. At the same time, the economy suffered the effects of unbounded corruption and state investment that had more to do with the short-term interests of the bloodsuckers in power than with any coherent projects for growth and development. The external public debt grew, accompanied by an extreme fiscal crisis "cured" by printing banknotes — with the inevitable inflationary consequences. The Central American market, thrown into disorder by the revolutionary upturn beginning in 1978-79 and the international capitalist economic crisis, went into depression. Foreign currency reserves fell, affecting imports and thus the production process. The national currency (quetzal) was de facto devalued in relation to the dollar, stimulating the currency black market and thus inflation, which could only rise. IMF pressure demolished the "model" economy that had relied on heavy state participation in investments (reduction in public spending from 1983).

For the masses, this crisis was expressed by increasing pauperisation. For the bulk of the population daily survival became the number one problem.

4) From the mid-1970s, there was a reactivation of mass struggles. This had a certain autonomy from the economic crisis, and was in fact an expression of economic growth.

As a sort of signal of this upturn, teachers went on strike in 1973. This spread to the national level. A broad solidarity movement emerged with an impressive support demonstration — given the vicious repression — in the capital. Despite the actions of the Arana government, the rail, electricity and tobacco workers also went into struggle. There was a radicalisation in trade-union circles jeopardising the plans to create trade unions controlled by the state.

In 1976 a strike broke out — that of the Coca-Cola (Embotelladora Guatemalaca) workers — which represents a turning point in workers' struggles. It put into question the employers' right to sack workers (after the 1976 earthquake there were a plethora of savage sackings) and posed the question of elementary trade-union rights.

This struggle acted as the catalyst for a process of trade union unification. It led to the creation of the Comité nacional de Unidad Sindical (CNUS), which brought together more than 65 unions, including the National Workers' Confederation (CNT). This latter thus broke its links with its origins in Christian democracy.

In November 1977, the miners (Indians) organised a protest march on the capital. In September 1978, a bus drivers' strike led to a riot in Cuidad de Guatemala against the rise in fares decided by the government (Lucas Garcia).

From Ist May 1978, the peasant movement appeared at the front of the social and political stage. After a long period of clandestine organising work the Comité de Unidad Campesina (Peasant Unity Committee, CUC) appeared publicly. It was the expression of a threefold effort on the part of the revolutionary forces: broad organisation of the peasants; consolidation of an alliance between the ladinos and indios sectors; a struggle against the fragmentation of different indios communities.

The peasants were hit by the most brutal repression. Symbolically, the regime decided to burn alive dozens of peasants from El Quiché who had peacefully occupied the embassy of the Spanish state to protest against military repression in January 1980. In February-March 1980, a national sugar workers' strike was organised by the CUC. In August of the same year, the banana plantation workers from the Atlantic Coast went into struggle.

At the same time, other sectors of society began to show their preparedness to fight. The students and the shantytown dwellers created an organisation: the Movimento Nacional de Pobladores (MONAP). The Christian base committees began, from 1978, to work in different social layers. Differences appeared in the church apparatus.

During a brief period, the mass movement found restricted openings. From 1978, the most brutal repression tried to disrupt this. An entire leading group of the CNUS was assassinated in June 1980.

In fact, the question of clandestinity for the mass movement was already on the agenda and openly discussed. It was here that the difficulty of combining the greatest possible use of the smallest openings, in order to give life to the mass movement, with effective protection of the structures and cadres of these movements was demonstrated. A certain "optimism" can perhaps be explained by the fact that since 1978 the rise in popular struggles had been stimulated by the positive developments of the Nicaraguan revolution and the promise of the Salvadoran revolution.

5) The growth of the mass movement during the 1970s and the beginning of 1980 is incomprehensible unless an understanding of the politico-military revolutionary organisations' activity is integrated.

These organisations, after the terrible blows suffered at the end of the 1960s, slowly got back on their feet in Guatemala. From 1972 to 1978-79, most of them were engaged in slow, clandestine painstaking work to rebuild their forces, their apparatus, and their social base.

A process of assimilating and reflecting on their own history led them, to different degrees, to go beyond "focoist" conceptions.

Four politico-military organisations are dominant: the Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP, Guerrilla Army of the Poor); the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (FAR, Rebel Armed Forces); the Organisation Revolucionaria del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA, Revolutionary Organisation of the People in Arms), the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo-Nucleo de Direccion Nacional (PGT-NDN, Guatemalan Workers Party-National Leadership Nucleus). This latter was formed from a split in the Communist Party (PGT-Central Committee) in 1978, a split on the question of armed struggle.

These organisations have developed work in regions and social sectors that, often, do not collide. The EGP, for instance, emphasised developing an implantation in the Indian regions of El Quiché, Alta and Baja Verapaz, Heuhetenango and Chimaltenango. In addition it asserted its presence in the capital and the coastal region. It played a key role in the development of the CUC. The FAR, originating from the FAR of the 1960s, have a significant activity in urban sectors, in the trade-union movement and the coastal (plantation) region, among others. After 1978, they solidified their guerrilla fronts in El Péten and Chimaltenango. The ORPA only appeard publicly in 1979, although it originates from a 1971 split in the FAR-PGT alliance. It has worked on integrating the Indian masses and is active — not having developed an effective conception of work in the mass organisations — in the San Marcos, Quezaltenango, Solo, Totonicopan, and Huehuetenango regions. The PGT has an urban activity, in the workers' movement among others.

They have in common a general conception of revolutionary people's war, which implies an integration of the social motor forces of the revolution into military confrontation. This general agreement obviously leaves room for many divergences in theory and practice. Nevertheless, a process of joint discussion started up in 1979 between the EGP, the FAR and the PGT (the "tripartite"). In 1980, the ORPA joined this forum.

In January 1982 a unity agreement was signed and gave birth to the Union revolucionara Guatemalteca (URNG, Guatemalan Revolutionary Union). This unity rested more on a statement of intention and a general objective than on a programme. The organisations had to confront a vigorous counter-insurgency offensive on every front in this period. This required a higher level of elaboration and strategic (military and political) homogeneity than they had at this stage.

At the same time, this unity, which should be put in its regional context, expressed the considerable progress made by the military/political organsations since 1978. Between 1979-80, they showed that they were able to construct military fronts in three-quarters of the country.

In fact, from 1981, the military question became the key element of the politico-social situation in Guatemala. The organisations carried out their work of social implantation, generalisation of the armed struggle and stimulating mass actions quite well. In fact, they began to challenge the class enemy, and its army, for territory.

Nevertheless, the ability to effectively lead the mass movement — that is, in tandem with the demands of an unremitting military confrontation — in the urban and coastal regions remained limited.

The strength of the apparatuses of the military organisations could not compensate for this weakness. In the worst of cases, it created a tendency of substitutionism in regard to the mass movement. In addition, the organisations came up against a political obstacle: how to occupy the political arena? How to create a political front that would challenge the regime among the intermediate layers of the population? How to combine a policy of alliances with the perspective of a politico-military outcome? The creation of the Frente Democratico Contra le Represion (FDCR, Democratic Front Against Repression), in 1979, represented a step forward in this domain. But it remained more a defensive response to the repressive policy of the government than a political front based on the progress of the revolutionary people's war. Its deficiencies were quite quickly revealed.

6) Imperialism, the ruling classes, and the army quickly understood the dangers of an irreversible revolutionary process. From 1980, the class struggle was concentrated, in essence, in the clash between the "contrainsurgencia" and the revolutionary people's war.

The counter-insurgency policy was primarily aimed at the mass movement of the urban areas and the coast. Its purpose was to socially isolate the revolutionary forces. It tried to strip the revolutionary forces of their material base in the towns and prevent them from carrying out sabotage actions directed at the agro-export sector. The counter-insurgency project then concentrated on the key regions of the altiplano, to deprive the guerrilla forces of the military initiative.

Counter-intelligence was particularly developed to attain these objectives. The main aspects of the army's activity were to prevent the concentration of the revolutionary forces, to prevent co-ordination of their movements and to destroy their supply and communications lines.

This attempt to impede the functioning of the revolutionary fronts — particularly those of the EGP — included plans to exterminate the population, to disperse and concentrate it in special zones (strategic hamlets), a "scorched earth" policy (deforestation, liquidation of indigenous crops). In order to separate the guerrilla forces from their popular base, the counter-revolutionary army — with the aid of imperialism, Israel and Taiwan — sought to break up the indigenous communities. This "defence of the West" involved: 35,000 assassinations; mass rapes of indigenous women; more than one million persons displaced inside the country; tens of thousands of peasants forced to seek refuge at the Mexican border (where the Mexican army kept them under close control); 900,000 people enrolled in the "civil patrols", with aim of involving them in the counter-insurgency and thus breaking them.

From 1983, the army concentrated its offensive on the revolutionary units, with the aim of liquidating them. This objective was not reached, which proves not only their military solidity but also their socio-political gains, and the depth of the historic crisis affecting the country and reflected in the bourgeoisie's forms of rule.

7) While not able to eliminate the revolutionary forces, the ruling classes and imperialism began a new phase of their counter-revolutionary, anti-people plan in 1984.

The counter-insurgency project was not limited to the military plane, even if that constituted its backbone. War and repression remained a decisive element. All the reorganisation of the military forces was aimed at continuing this war against the people and to leave the reins of power with the army at this level... but, it was combined with social "reform" measures (infrastructure, agrarian projects under the control of the army in the combat zones) and political "reforms" (elections).

This political counter-offensive was supposed to make it possible to deprive the weakened revolutionary forces of a political base and to reorganise the ruling bloc by trying to broaden its political base and reduce the internal contradictions in an army that was too exposed on the political level. But this political reform was also intended to play a role in the diplomatic operation of the Guatemalan bourgeoisie and imperialism. Even though tensions can exist between the imperialists and local regimes the "stability" of their relations rests in the last instance on the advances of counter-insurgency plans at the regional and national level. This is illustrated by the reorganisation of relations between Guatemala and the United States following 1983.

However, the designs of the counter-revolution came up against several obstacles. The economic crisis undermines the "social reform" projects, limited though they are. The crisis makes it inevitable that austerity policies will be continued bringing insupportable pressure on the popular masses and the middle layers that are becoming steadily impoverished.

Since 1982, some hard blows have been struck at the revolutionary forces. Nevertheless, URNG's capacity for action still remains an essential factor in the socio-political developments in the country.

The forces comprising the URNG are engaged in a process of reflection at a higher level, the product of the very high level of the class struggle. The economic crisis as well as the social effects of the counter-insurgency plans decisively demonstrate the historic bankruptcy of the ruling classes. It is obvious that it is for the popular forces and their allies to offer a real programme of national salvation that would appear as an alternative to the operations of the ruling classes, which lack any real future.

It is in drawing out the elements of such a programme, achieving a new convergence between the URNG's ability to act militarily and the mass movement, linking the construction of various mass fronts (in the urban milieu, on the coast and in the strongholds of the counter-insurgency) that the Guatemalan revolutionaries will demolish the counter-revolutionary plans, among the most barbaric developed by a ruling class, imperialism and its allies. Political dialogue and unity in action will make it possible to take a step forward in the process of political unification and to elaborate a response to the tactical challenge of the elections as well as to the strategic problems of mass work and the revolutionary people's war.

The future of the revolution in Guatemala cannot be separated from that of the Central American revolution. Over and above the conjunctural ups and downs, the process started on Nicaragua in 1979 will indubitably find its expression in Guatemala, through a people and revolutionaries who demonstrate at the highest level that the desire to fight for self-determination, dignity, social liberation is much stronger than all the plans of imperialists, if this is expressed in revolutionary organisations that know how to keep their continuity and keep up a continuous process of strategic thinking, in the light of their experience.

VI. Building a solidarity movement

The escalation of imperialist intervention in Central America has already taken on the dimension of an out and out war of agression against Nicaragua. More than ever solidarity with the Central American revolution is a central task for the whole of the Fourth International. This means:

• giving political and material aid to the liberation struggles in the region;

• developing a systematic information campaign about the reality of the imperliast intervention and against the media-orchestrated "misinformation";

• to try and bring about a situation where the imperialist intervention is confronted outside of the Central American theatre itself with a powerful network of solidarity, the living expression of the significance of the test of strength taking place in the region.

There already exists, even before any direct mass intervention of American imperialism, an active solidarity movement internationally. Furthermore, in addition to the united front committees which make up the motorforce of the solidarity movement there is a powerful anti-war movement in many countries which opens up the possibility of qualitatively broadening this solidarity, faced with new stages in the escalation. Finally, the challenge made to imperialism in its direct zone of influence and the very character of the Sandinista revolution has sparked off an internationalist remobilisation among significant layers of young people and has produced, for the first time since the Vietnamese revolution, a profound indentification with an unfolding revolution.

These conditions mean that it is both possible and necessary to bring the solidarity work onto a superior level in the next period.

Already, with the intensification of the counter-revolutionary operations and thanks to the efforts of the FSLN in favour of united non-exclusive solidarity, there has been a new boost in the defence of the Nicaraguan revolution — even if criminal operations like the mining of the ports did not receive the adequate solidarity response.

On the other hand solidarity with the Salvadoran people's struggle — which had more attention up to the middle of 1982, has run a little out of steam and experiences difficulties. First of all because this work was initiated with the perspective of a short term victory and had to redefine its tasks in the framework of a war of resistance in which imperialism was now a full participant. It also suffered the effects of the FPL crisis inside the solidarity movement.

Today it is indispensable to broaden solidarity, to closely link the defence of the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran revolutions in a united campaign against imperialist intervention and for the right of the peoples of Central America to freely determine their own future.

Popularising the proposals and positions of the FMLN and the FSLN is a full part of such a campaign, while maintaining the political autonomy of the movement of solidarity with their liberation struggle until final victory.

From the point of view of the International as a whole it is a question of a prolonged campaign, regularly punctuated by initiatives to be worked out concretely with the appropriate means in all sectors of intervention of the sections.

The united committees and collectives, which have maintained for several years regular solidarity activity, are the motor and the most consistent pole of the bigger movement. To bring this campaign into line with the stakes involved, it is necessary on the basis of the gains represented by the committees to broaden the front of those forces committed to work against imperialist intervention. Broadening the front can be done in several ways:

• firstly and above all towards the workers' movement, through "twinning" workplaces, tours of information related to specific sectors (health for example), and initiatives to raise funds involving trade unions at a local or workplace level. Initiatives like the trade union meeting for peace, held in Managua in April 1984, should, if concrete proposals come out of them, help work in this direction;

• then towards the anti-war movement, to the extent that one can raise opposition to the war of aggression already going on in Central America more and more in the mobilisations against the missiles;

• finally with religious and humanitarian bodies, through financial campaigns and international information conferences.

The main activities around which the solidarity campaigns are organised are:

• the ongoing campaign of information on the reality of American aggression in Nicaragua, on the crimes of the counter-revolution and the bombing of civilians in El Salvador, on the positions of the FSLN and the FMLN in relation to the big national and international problems linked to their struggle;

• organising tours of information, meetings, conferences and demonstrations, strengthening international co-ordination at the level of the committees thereby contributing to a greater effectiveness of their initiatives;

• continuing and extending material and financial solidarity, more than ever indispensable given the economic situation created by the war; twinning cities, directly linking workplaces or organisations can provide the framework for this;

• continuing and building up the work brigades for Nicaragua, which fulfill the function of both material solidarity and information. Their existence is a precious gain: it is the first time that so many militants with such varied political, trade union or ideological affiliations have had the opportunity of forging direct links with the experience of an unfolding revolution and to get from it a conviction and a force which keeps the solidarity movement so alive.

For the International itself, stepping up the campaign means:

• strengthening the responsibility of the leaderships of the sections for this campaign, to actively follow this work;

• giving particular importance to the youth organisations in solidarity with the Fourth International taking up this work and getting involved in the campaign;

• improving information and analysis about the Central American situation and the solidarity movement in our press;

• strengthening links with the Central American revolutionary organisations.

[1] On the trajectory of the revolution in Grenada and the imperialist intervention, see the resolution adopted by the United Secretariat (13th May 1984) published in International Viewpoint No. 54, 4th June 1984, and Intercontinental Press 9th July 1984.

[2] See: The present stage of building the International, Chap. 2, points 1 and 2 this volume.

[3] For an analysis of the general political and socio-economic conditions of the revolution one can consult the resolution adopted by the 11th World Congress in November 1979. (See special Intercontinental Press, Feb 1980).

[4] A critical balance sheet has to be drawn of the positions adopted by the Fourth International at its 11th World Congress (November 1979). The criticism bears on three inter-related aspects. The first is the delay in the understanding of the character and trajectory of the FSLN (June 1979 USEC resolution). We can certainly invoke the fact that this current had declined numerically and was heterogenous during the 1970s.

Secondly the FSLN alliance policy; its actions were incorrectly grasped (problem of hegemony) and were not situated in the context of a battle for "national unity against Somoza" in the sense understood by the FSLN. Thirdly, characterising the state as capitalist after July 1979, with a situation of sui-generis dual power, was an attempt to grasp the specificity of the situation, but was wrong. Consequently the judgement made concerning the installation of a workers' and peasants' government following a series of changes that took place between March and September 1980 (USEC resolution, September 1980) confused the process of consolidation of the workers state with the establishment of a workers' and peasants' government. The largest minority at the 11th World Congress stated that: "The workers' and peasants' government in Nicaragua ... is similar to the regimes described by the Fourth International which emerged and exercised power in Cuba and in Algeria from the end of 1963 to the middle of 1965". And further on: "Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois personalities hold government posts. Capitalist property and control of the main sectors of industry and agriculture has not been destroyed. This signifies that the class character of the state remains bourgeois". The minority announced: "the approaching test of strength (in the sense of expropriation of the capitalists) in the months to come". A mere examination of the different tasks confronting revolutionaries (in particular concerning the army) in Algeria from 1963 to 1965 and Nicaragua since 1979 indicates the lack of validity of this characterisation which combines workers' and peasants' government and capitalist state.

These errors have not however led to our current going wrong on general political tasks, on the attitude to take to the FSLN, recognised as a revolutionary leadership, or on solidarity work.